Affective Medicine: a review of Affective Computing efforts in Medical Informatics

Background: Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions”. AC enables investigation and understanding of the relation between human emotions and health as well as application of assistive and useful technologies in the medical domain. Objectives: 1) To review the general state of the art in AC and its applications in medicine, and 2) to establish synergies between the research communities of AC and medical informatics. Methods: Aspects related to the human affective state as a determinant of the human health are discussed, coupled with an illustration of significant AC research and related literature output. Moreover, affective communication channels are described and their range of application fields is explored through illustrative examples. Results: The presented conferences, European research projects and research publications illustrate the recent increase of interest in the AC area by the medical community. Tele-home healthcare, AmI, ubiquitous monitoring, e-learning and virtual communities with emotionally expressive characters for elderly or impaired people are few areas where the potential of AC has been realized and applications have emerged. Conclusions: A number of gaps can potentially be overcome through the synergy of AC and medical informatics. The application of AC technologies parallels the advancement of the existing state of the art and the introduction of new methods. The amount of work and projects reviewed in this paper witness an ambitious and optimistic synergetic future of the affective medicine field

Improving elderly access to audiovisual and social media, using a multimodal human-computer interface

With the growth of Internet and especially, the proliferation of social media services, an opportunity has emerged for greater social and technological integration of the elderly. However, the adoption of new technologies by this segment of the population is not always straightforward mainly due to the physical and cognitive difficulties that are typically associated with ageing. Thus, for elderly to take advantage of new technologies and services that can help improve their quality of life, barriers must be broken by designing solutions with those needs in mind from the start. The aim of this work is to verify whether Multimodal Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI) systems designed with Universal Accessibility principles, taking into account elderly specific requirements, facilitate the adoption and access to popular Social Media Services (SMSs) and Audiovisual Communication Services, thus potentially contributing to the elderly social and technological integration. A user study was initially conducted in order to learn about the limitations and requirements of elderly people with existing HCI, concerning particularly SMSs and Audiovisual Communication Services, such as Facebook or Windows Live Messenger (WLM). The results of the study, basically a set of new MHCI requirements, were used to inform further development and enhancement of a multimodal prototype previously proposed for mobility-impaired individuals, now targeting the elderly. The prototype allows connecting users with their social networks through a text, audio and video communication service and integrates with SMSs, using natural interaction modalities, like speech, touch and gesture. After the development stage a usability evaluation study was conducted. The study reveals that such multimodal solution could simplify accessibility to the supported services, through the provision of simpler to use interfaces, by adopting natural interaction modalities and by being more satisfying to use by the elderly population, than most of the current graphical user interfaces for those same services, such as Facebook.Com o crescimento da Internet e, especialmente, das redes sociais surge a oportunidade para uma maior integração social e tecnológica dos idosos. No entanto, a adoção de novas tecnologias por essa população nem sempre é simples, principalmente devido às dificuldades físicas e cognitivas que estão associadas com o envelhecimento. Assim, e para que os idosos possam tirar proveito das novas tecnologias e serviços que podem ajudar a melhorar sua qualidade de vida, essas barreiras devem ser ultrapassadas desenhando soluções de raiz com essas necessidades em mente. O objetivo deste trabalho é verificar se interfaces humano-computador multimodais desenhadas com base em princípios de Acessibilidade Universal, tendo em conta requisitos específicos da população idosa, proporcionam um acesso simplificado a serviços de média social e serviços de comunicação audiovisuais, potencialmente contribuindo para a integração social e tecnológica desta população. Um estudo com utilizadores foi inicialmente conduzido a fim de apurar as necessidades especiais desses utilizadores com soluções de software, mais especificamente serviços de média social e serviços de conferência, como o Facebook ou o Windows Live Messenger. Os resultados do estudo foram utilizados para planear o desenvolvimento de um protótipo multimodal proposto anteriormente para utilizadores com mobilidade reduzida. Este permite ligar utilizadores às suas redes sociais através de um serviço de conferência por texto, áudio e vídeo, e um serviço integrado de média social, usando modalidades de interação natural, como o toque, fala e gestos. Após a fase de desenvolvimento foi realizado um estudo de usabilidade. Esse estudo revelou que este tipo de soluções pode simplificar a acessibilidade aos serviços considerados, dado ter interfaces mais simples, por adotar modalidades de interação mais naturais e por ser mais gratificante do que a maioria das interfaces gráficas atuais para os mesmos serviços, como por exemplo o Facebook

Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Speech-centric multimodal interaction for easy-to-access online services: A personal life assistant for the elderly

The PaeLife project is a European industry-academia collaboration whose goal is to provide the elderly with easy access to online services that make their life easier and encourage their continued participation in the society. To reach this goal, the project partners are developing a multimodal virtual personal life assistant (PLA) offering a wide range of services from weather information to social networking. This paper presents the multimodal architecture of the PLA, the services provided by the PLA, and the work done in the area of speech input and output modalities, which play a key role in the application.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Speech-centric multimodal interaction for easy-to-access online services: A personal life assistant for the elderly

The PaeLife project is a European industry-academia collaboration whose goal is to provide the elderly with easy access to online services that make their life easier and encourage their continued participation in the society. To reach this goal, the project partners are developing a multimodal virtual personal life assistant (PLA) offering a wide range of services from weather information to social networking. This paper presents the multimodal architecture of the PLA, the services provided by the PLA, and the work done in the area of speech input and output modalities, which play a key role in the application.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

State of the art of audio- and video based solutions for AAL

Working Group 3. Audio- and Video-based AAL ApplicationsIt is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters (e.g., heart rate, respiratory rate). Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals (e.g., speech recordings). Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary 4 debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely (i) lifelogging and self-monitoring, (ii) remote monitoring of vital signs, (iii) emotional state recognition, (iv) food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, (v) activity and personal assistance, (vi) gesture recognition, (vii) fall detection and prevention, (viii) mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and (ix) cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed.publishedVersio

Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Interacting with Smart Objects 2015

These are the Proceedings of the 4th IUI Workshop on Interacting with Smart Objects. Objects that we use in our everyday life are expanding their restricted interaction capabilities and provide functionalities that go far beyond their original functionality. They feature computing capabilities and are thus able to capture information, process and store it and interact with their environments, turning them into smart objects

Behavior analysis for aging-in-place using similarity heatmaps

The demand for healthcare services for an increasing population of older adults is faced with the shortage of skilled caregivers and a constant increase in healthcare costs. In addition, the strong preference of the elderly to live independently has been driving much research on "ambient-assisted living" (AAL) systems to support aging-in-place. In this paper, we propose to employ a low-resolution image sensor network for behavior analysis of a home occupant. A network of 10 low-resolution cameras (30x30 pixels) is installed in a service flat of an elderly, based on which the user's mobility tracks are extracted using a maximum likelihood tracker. We propose a novel measure to find similar patterns of behavior between each pair of days from the user's detected positions, based on heatmaps and Earth mover's distance (EMD). Then, we use an exemplar-based approach to identify sleeping, eating, and sitting activities, and walking patterns of the elderly user for two weeks of real-life recordings. The proposed system achieves an overall accuracy of about 94%