Interaction with a Virtual Coach for Active and Healthy Ageing

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 23; no. 5; p. 2748
• Main Authors: McTear, Michael, Jokinen, Kristiina, Alam, Mirza Mohtashim, Saleem, Qasid, Napolitano, Giulio, Szczepaniak, Florian, Hariz, Mossaab, Chollet, Gérard, Lohr, Christophe, Boudy, Jérôme, Azimi, Zohre, Roelen, Sonja Dana, Wieching, Rainer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 02.03.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: active and healthy ageing; Aging; Artificial Intelligence; Augmented reality; Bioengineering; Coaching; Computational linguistics; Computer Science; dialogue system; Emotions; European Union; Exercise; France; Health aspects; Healthy Aging; Humans; Italy; Knowledge bases (artificial intelligence); Knowledge representation; knowledge sources; Language processing; Life expectancy; Life Sciences; Mobility; Motion capture; Natural language; Natural language interfaces; Older people; participatory design; Robots; Sensors; Verbal communication; France; Italy; Japan; Germany; Norway; Spain; participatory design; sensors; dialogue system; knowledge sources; active and healthy ageing
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s23052748

Since life expectancy has increased significantly over the past century, society is being forced to discover innovative ways to support active aging and elderly care. The e-VITA project, which receives funding from both the European Union and Japan, is built on a cutting edge method of virtual coaching that focuses on the key areas of active and healthy aging. The requirements for the virtual coach were ascertained through a process of participatory design in workshops, focus groups, and living laboratories in Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. Several use cases were then chosen for development utilising the open-source Rasa framework. The system uses common representations such as Knowledge Bases and Knowledge Graphs to enable the integration of context, subject expertise, and multimodal data, and is available in English, German, French, Italian, and Japanese.