In this article, we address the implementation and deployment of a service robot platform for interaction with the elderly in the context of a collaborative European initiative. Specifically, we overview the development of the robot system architecture and components, focusing on the graceful integration of a set of interoperable intelligent services towards advanced human–robot interaction. The service robot targets older people with light physical or psychological issues, delivering several different functionalities, and putting itself at their service. We describe the initial validation tests in a semi-controlled scenario, as well as the deployment of the robotic platform during a week-long pilot in an end user environment. The main challenges and the outcome of the experimental tests with the mobile robot platform are discussed, and results show generally positive reactions from the care center residents, which have provided their valuable feedback on the usability, appearance, interaction and satisfaction of the robot, yielding important lessons that were learned while performing the pilot.

SocialRobot is a collaborative European project, which focuses on providing a practical and interactive solution to improve the quality of life of elderly people. Having this in mind, a state of the art robotic mobile platform has been integrated with virtual social care technology to meet the elderly individual needs and requirements, following a human centered approach. In this short paper, we make an overview of SocialRobot, the developed architecture and the human-robot interactive scenarios being prepared and tested in the framework of the project for dissemination and exploitation purposes.

Demographic change is boosting the use of assistive technologies, like Personal Care Robots (PCR), in elderly care. However, the legislation and guidelines for the development of PCR is still fragmented and structured tools and procedures are required. This article presents a proposal for a Verification Methodology for Ethical Compliance in robotic platforms development. Differently from other projects and publications, it does not devote itself to discourse on ethical and moral issues itself but in suggesting a structured method to approach these issues, facilitating an integrated and holistic approach that can ensure more adjusted and fruitful outcomes. This methodology works around a constellation of actors - researchers, developers and end-users – that were involved in all different phases of its development and should also intervene in its enforcement.

Currently, the main care model for supporting elderly people living alone at home is based on informal and formal caregivers assistance. Considering the demographic changes of older population, which increases rapidly, this model is expected to pose major challenges both in the economy as well as the society. To address these challenges, there is growing attention for assistive technologies to support seniors stay active and independent, for as long as possible, in their preferred home environments. ICT systems for Ageing Well are among those initiatives. The work presented in this paper is based on the context of the Miraculous-Life project. It focuses on the identification and assessment, in terms of usefulness, technical feasibility and constrains, of a set (package) of services that an ICT system for Ageing Well should support. The results extracted from our study and provided in this paper can be considered by other projects working in the area of Ageing Well and assist the consortium to gain an insight about (i) which ICT services can provide the greater benefit to the elderly and their caregivers’ QoL, and thus reduce time and resources needed to be allocated for identifying, from scratch, the services that will be supported by their system, and (ii) the technical perspective of the ICT services and prioritize their development, as well as, facilitate better allocation of their resources, to minimize any risks that could result in failure to implement these services in the framework of their project.

Fortunately, improvements in welfare and medical care will allow life expectancy in Europe's population to increase by the year 2050. However, it is not always the case that living longer implies a healthier, more active and independent life. In this context, technologies and products that will act as assistive companions to elderly, who are living alone at their home, are attracting a growing interest from both a research and commercial perspective. Literature reports contradictory results on the preferences of elderly towards assistive technologies and more specifically, service robots. In this paper, we are called to present an empirical study, conducted in the scope of an EU – Horizon 2020 project, in order to explore people's perceptions, attitudes and requirements towards the idea of a future service robot for the home.

Robotic systems in Ageing Well, like GrowMeUp, are among those assistive technologies, providing companionship and offering functionality related to the support of active and independent living, monitoring and maintaining safety, and enhancement of health and psychological well-being of the elderly. The work presented in this paper is based on the context of GrowMeUp project and focuses on presenting the main novelties introduced with the GrowMeUp system, providing a robotic cloud ecosystem, able to support, encourage and engage the older persons to stay socially involved and longer active and independent, in carrying out their daily life at home. Emphasis is given on the important issues of end user's acceptance, usability and affordability and how technologies like cloud computing and different learning and intelligent dialoguing mechanisms are brought together in one solution to address these issues.

Assisting older adults at work is of critical importance in nowadays fast-emerging computerized environments. Therefore, it is paramount to provide support to mitigate age-related cognitive degradation and to relieve their fear towards technological changes. In this demo paper, we present CogniWin, an integrated framework for providing personalized support to older adults at work, which aims to achieve the above goals and to make them feel more positive in prolonging their stay at work. We present an overall description of the system components and the integration architecture, and highlight the benefits of using the system. CCS Concepts • Human-centered Computing ➝ Human Computer Interaction (HCI) ➝ Interactive Systems and Tools.

Most elderly people prefer to live independently, for as long as possible, in their preferred environment. Nowadays, the predominant care model for supporting elders living alone at home is based on informal carers’ assistance (i.e., relatives, friends, neighbours, etc.). Considering the shifting demography of the elderly population, this model is expected to pose major challenges both in the economy as well as the society. To address these challenges, there is growing attention for assistive technologies to support seniors stay active and independent for as long as possible in their preferred home environment. ICT and Robotic systems are among those initiatives. The work presented in this paper is based on the context of the Social Robot project and focuses on presenting the integration of ICT and Robotic technologies as a trigger towards ‘Positive Ageing’. ‘Positive Ageing’ seeks to take a balance approach between addressing the opportunities and challenges of an ageing society rather than seeing the increase in longevity as a burden and a threat.

Based on the demographic changes and the rapid increase of older population in Europe, major challenges are expected to rise, both in the economy as well as the society, whether the dominant care model for supporting elderly in living independently at home continues to rely on informal and formal caregivers' assistance. To respond to the above challenges, assistive technologies are called to develop Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services for supporting seniors to remain active and independent, for as long as possible, in their chosen home environment. The work described in this Letter is based on the Miraculous-Life project and it emphasises the identification and assessment of a set of services that an ICT system for Ageing Well should support, in an actual end-users setting. The outcome of this work may inform fellow researchers and other projects in the area of Ageing Well in: (i) understanding which ICT services can be the most valuable for end-users' Quality of Life, (ii) prioritising the development of related ICT services and (iii) facilitating better recourse allocation in order to reduce any risks associated to implementation failures of these services within their respective projects. A final trial phase is planned, aiming to validate the Miraculous Life prototype longitudinally in a naturalistic environment with a larger sample size. During this trial, it will be investigated if perceived usefulness, satisfaction and motivation could be predicted by sociodemographic variables and personality.

Stress is an unpleasant condition that entails negative emotions such as fear, worry and nervousness. Motivated by existing research that accompanies stress with physical reactions like increased heart rate, blood volume, pupil dilation and skin conductance, this work builds on the premise that measuring such reactions in real-time could implicitly identify stress of older adults at work while interacting with a system. For this purpose, an inhouse computer mouse was built with embedded sensors for measuring the users’ heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature, and grip force. We have developed a probabilistic classification algorithm that receives as input these physiological measurements, and accordingly identifies emotional stress events. This work contributes to a large body of research in user modeling, aiming to identify when computer users are stressed, and accordingly provide intelligent interventions and personalized solutions to help reduce their frustration and prevent negative health conditions.

Collaboration and knowledge sharing in small teams is very usual not only in education but also in industry, in gaming and in our lives. Interdisciplinary teams are formed and their members are expected to collaborate, exploit their capabilities and know-how towards achieving a common goal. In this work we explore whether parameters associated with the development of Transactive Memory System (TMS) can be reflected in a 3D virtual world. People from diverse background and profession brought together in teams to work towards completing an assigned task within a 3D virtual world. The results show strong associations between the parameters of a TMS, collaboration activities and communication scales examined.

Older adults traditionally face major challenges at work when it comes to dealing with new technological tools. A sense of overwhelm and frustration can quickly arise under these circumstances. Continuous negative feelings in the work environment may lead to the increase of the risks for cognitive decline and threaten independence and quality of life. In this work, we focus on the seamless identification of frustration of older adults at work via physiological sensors embedded in an in-house developed computer mouse, denoted as CogniMouse. For the purpose of this research, we have developed a probabilistic classification algorithm that receives real-time signals and physiological measurement streams as input, and accordingly identifies frustration events. Ultimately, such classification can be leveraged to deliver user interventions and personalized solutions to help reduce user frustration.

In this paper, we address the development of an innovative service mobile robot for social interaction and home care. Specifically, we focus on the integration of a set of intelligent services in the robot towards natural human-robot interaction, and targeting the 65+ age group. We describe the navigation, perception, interaction, data collection and interfacing capabilities developed using the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework to provide personalized care and socialization to the elderly. We discuss the main challenges involved and open optimistic prospects for the final end-users validation of the system.

The information and communication technology (ICT) we interact with in daily life is more and more distributed in the environment (the so called intelligent space). Most of these devices have increasing calculation capacity and therefore the potential to contribute to an overall distributed calculation power and therefor a processing intelligence. These so called intelligent nodes can for example provide context information (sensors) or act as an interface through which we interact with the whole system. At the same time interaction with such ambient intelligent systems gets more and more complex. The interaction with the system is not any more human to single machine, like we were used in the interaction with the personal computer (PC) or personal device, it’s an interaction with a system which is around us and ubiquitously distributed in our surroundings.Research projects are currently investigating the possibility of users interacting with avatars. The advantage of avatars is, that the systems gets an embodiment and a personality. The complexity of the underlying distributed system is hidden from the user. The user is interacting in a natural dialogue with a system which has a personality, cognitive and effective capabilities, human like memory structures as well as perception and awareness. The paper presents the concept of ambient intelligent systems and the challenges regarding user interaction. It shows how the interaction of such systems can be improved by the embodiment of an ambient distributed system. Based on three current research projects working with avatars this concept is explained and first results are presented.

This paper presents an innovative virtual assistant system, which aims to address older adults' needs in a professional environment by proposing promising and innovative virtual assistance mechanisms. The system, named CogniWin, is expected to alleviate eventual age related memory degradation and gradual decrease of other cognitive capabilities (i.e. speed of processing new information, concentration level) and at the same time assist older adults to increase their learning abilities through personalized learning assistance and well-being guidance. In this paper we describe the overall system concept, the technological approach, the methodology used in the elicitation of user needs, and describe the first pre-trials' evaluation.

This paper presents a method for analyzing users' computer mouse interaction data with the aim to implicitly identify task completion difficulty while interacting with a system. Computer mouse motion streams and users' skin conductance signals, acquired via an in-house developed computer mouse, and users' feedback were investigated as reactions to task difficulty raising events. A classification algorithm was developed, producing real-time user models of user hesitation states. Preliminary results of a study in progress with seven older adults at work (age 56+) provide initial indications about links between mouse triggering states of user hesitation and task completion difficulty.

SocialRobot is a collaborative European project, which focuses on providing a practical and interactive robotic solution to improve the quality of life of elderly people. Having this in mind, a state of the art mobile robot platform has been integrated with virtual social care technology to meet the elderly individual needs and requirements, following a human centered approach. In this paper, we make an overview of SocialRobot, addressing mainly the integration of the platform and the architecture developed for the project, as well as the existing robot services, the human-robot interactive scenarios prepared, and results extracted from experimental tests with the mobile robot platform.

This paper presents a method for analyzing users' computer mouse interaction data with the aim to implicitly identify task completion difficulty while interacting with a system. Computer mouse motion streams and users' skin conductance signals, acquired via an in-house developed computer mouse, and users' feedback were investigated as reactions to task difficulty raising events. A classification algorithm was developed, producing real-time user models of user hesitation states. Preliminary results of a study in progress with seven older adults at work (age 56+) provide initial indications about links between mouse triggering states of user hesitation and task completion difficulty.

This paper investigates the preferences and the expectations of endusers related to the appearance and personality of a Virtual Support Partner (VSP); namely an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) that attends to the daily activities of the seniors. The results presented in this paper, reveal that end users are in favor of an emphatic, emotional and friendly companion, preferably represented by a human-like or an animal-like body, that provides to them both social support and assistance through a guiding attitude.

This paper proposes a new service model for ICTbased service robots to support elderly people, which benefits from the platform’s ability to recognize persons and from having access different types of elderly information, such as their preferences or disabilities. The common existing paradigm in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions is that of a platform that holds different, generic services that fulfil the average elderly needs. This type of approach fails to promote an enduring robot’s acceptability and usability, in the sense that services fail to adapt to elderly changing needs along time. In this paper we present a service model which uses an XML format representation, and discuss its implementation in a mobile robotic platform within the scope of the SocialRobot project. The proposed service model goes beyond the models existing in state of the art daily task assistant robots. While being executed, services accept multiple different sources of information as arguments and use them to best fit the service provision to the end user. This paper also presents our solution for person recognition and discusses other alternative solutions, their pros and cons in the envisioned real use case scenarios. Initial tests show a highly flexible and adaptable service provision. Services can be expanded or new services created without incurring in additional costs emerging from the intervention of expert technicians, contributing thus to an affordable solution for the AAL market.