Summary of the Workshop Affective Interaction with Avatars @ Ambient Intelligence 2015

The workshop Affective Interaction with Avatars was held at the 2015 Ambient Intelligence conference, in Athens, Greece, during November 11th. The workshop focused on the affective interaction with Avatars, also known as Embodied Conversational Agents. This technology is increasingly used in the area of Ambient Assisted Living to provide natural interfaces for elderlies. Several aspects of affective interaction (e.g recognition of the emotional state of the user, modelling of the agent’s behaviour, and feedback via animated facial and/or bodily expressions) will be discussed during the workshop. There were four presentations and twelve participants from seven countries joining an open discussion

Soco-net: Social care community network

Summary: SoCo-net presents a social care network based on an innovative practice-oriented care community model that supports elderly people to remain longer indepenedent by integrating new types of advance elderly social interaction with new ways of formal and informal care provision. Objective: The main aim is to organize around the elderly personalized Virtual Collaborative Care Teams, consisiting of formal and informal carers, that can actively collaborate to provide ICT based elderly care in the areas of care & wellness, guidance and mobility assistance services. It focuses on end-users wishes and needs in terms of what factors, relationships and communication issues are meaningful and generate the greatest impact on the elderly self care. Methodology: Focus groups, structured interviews and questionnaires were applied to identify the elderly socialization needs and wishes and use case scenarios were formulated. The solution was validated by a sample of 100 end-users (including elderly, formal and informal care professionals) by the Orbis Medical & Care Group, in Netherlands. Results: Based on the analysis performed on the validation results, 72% of the elderly and 100% of the care professionals find it very easy to use (even without guidance). Also 84% of the elderly and 100% of the care professionals find it very useful and said that it can significantly improve their quality of life