Abstract |
The continuous growth of the older population in Europe and the progressive ageing
of society
worldwide bring about the need for new technological solutions for
improving the health, independent living, quality of life and active ageing of older
citizens in the Information Society. Quality of life and active aging of elderly people is
becoming an
essential objective for today’s European societies. In this scope, the term
“Ambient Assisted Living” (AAL) is used to refer to the meaningful usage of
information and communication technologies, in a way that they can improve the
quality of life of older
people by offering them safety and comfort to live longer at
home and prologue their independence. Many studies have been carried out about
empowering the elderly in AAL environments, concerning the aspects of facilitating
everyday living, addressing medic
al conditions and taking appropriate actions in
emergency situations. However, an equally important aspect of the elderly's lives is
their active engagement in their surrounding environment and this implies interacting
with different types of
technology.
R
obotic platforms have been around for quite some time since researchers have been
trying to overcome essential problems that are related to the nature of robotics and
their usage in domestic environments. Successful integration of robotic platforms in a
do
mestic environment has been the result of multidisciplinary efforts from various
scientific fields ranging from computer vision to machine learning and information
systems. The challenges of these approaches have been so overwhelming that more
focus was gi
ven to achieving a safe robot existence in a domestic environment than
the actual human
-
robot interaction between the platform and its users. However,
since the field of robotics has matured over the last years, a focus shift from the
hardware itself to th
e HRI part of the robot’s existence in such domestic environments
is becoming more and more
necessary.
Furthermore research efforts have focused on incorporating household robotic
platforms in such environments under the role of domestic care givers or so
cial
companion. The possibilities that are offered by these domestic platforms towards the
assistance in everyday life and the wellbeing of the senior citizens are being
extensively researched in recent efforts as this scientific field has been drawing
con
siderable attention in recent years. To this end, domestic robotic platforms have
been proved to be a valuable piece of technology since they can actively and
proactively assist senior citizens in their everyday
lives.
This work provides a focus shift towa
rds the interaction part of the collaborative co
-
existence of the elderly and the robot. The main goal is to achieve the development
of a commonly understood interaction language. In this novel form of communication,
interaction should be tailored to the e
nd users taking into account the specific
requirements of each individual, the environmental state but also the capacity of the
input/output channels provided by the robotic platform. To this end, the current
thesis focuses on creating a universal solution
to be used as the corner stone for
building multimodal, elderly friendly, interactive applications that target household
robots for elderly users. This research work provides developers with the necessary
technologies, tools and building blocks for creati
ng
easy to use elderly
-
friendly
multimodal applications in AAL environments, with particular focus on robotic
platforms, thus increasing their level of adaptation to users’ needs, and, as a
consequence, users’ acceptance of these technologies. The applica
tions developed
using the proposed framework are inherently friendly to the elder users, while
adapting to their needs, the surrounding environment and the context of use. This
results in a smooth learning curve, providing increased levels of user satisfac
tion.
Moreover, the use of the proposed framework introduces new interaction modalities
such as voice and gestures, enriching and simplifying the interaction experience of the
applications. Finally, the framework facilitates effective and efficient develop
ment of
the supported user interfaces, thus simplifying to a great extent the developer’s work.
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