Assistive Technologies for Supporting the Wellbeing of Older Adults

Abstract

As people age, they are more likely to develop multiple chronic diseases and experience a decline in some of their physical and cognitive functions, leading to the decrease in their ability to live independently. Innovative technology-based interventions tailored to older adults’ functional levels and focused on healthy lifestyles are considered imperative. This work proposed a framework of active and healthy ageing through the integration of a broad spectrum of digital solutions into an open Pan-European technological platform in the context of the SHAPES project, an EU-funded innovation action. In conclusion, the SHAPES project can potentially engage older adults in a holistic technological ecosystem and, therefore, facilitate the maintenance of a high-quality standard of life.

DigiHEALTH: Suite of Digital Solutions for Long-Term Healthy and Active Aging

“…ADILIB is a built-in software for creating and developing digital voice assistants [ 45 , 46 ]. An ADILIB conversational agent is capable of understanding natural spoken language and generating a response.…”

Recognition of Human Actions through Speech or Voice Using Machine Learning Techniques

“…Another situation could be, "It is cold in the library", in this case, the user needs to be cold in the library environment, the system should infer the context and activate the heating. This system could collaborate with elderly people, who develop multiple chronic diseases and experience a decline in some of their physical and cognitive functions, leading to a decrease in their ability to live independently [29]. This need is considered imperative because of the great contribution it could make as a holistic technological ecosystem to improve people's quality of life.…”

Challenges of deploying assistive robots in real-life scenarios: an industrial perspective

“…Several activities were proposed by researchers and each type of end-user would rank the activity on a 5point Likert scale. They could also suggest new activities and prioritize them (see [12] further details). The robot would adapt its interaction language to each pilot site e.g.…”

“…There has been increased research in the past few years towards the deployment of socially assistive robots (SAR) in real-world healthcare scenarios, aimed, among other applications, at assisting older adults with the different needs previously mentioned. A few examples are: providing support for cognitive training [10], [11], [12], offering companionship [13], delivering reminders or scheduling videocalls [14], health monitoring such as temperature control or predicting and supporting fall detection [15], [16], among others.…”