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Sponsor is an AAL project that aims at developing, testing and implementing an ICT platform to facilitate the posting, browsing and exchange of key information between competence-offering seniors and search-based requests from competence-demanding organizations within the public, private and voluntary sectors. This paper describes a specific aspect addressed in developing a pilot for the project dedicated to volunteering associations support. Very important when dealing with volunteers is their assignment to the right activities not only suitable for their capabilities but also for their current wishes. The paper describes a complete prototype called SponsorT developed to support a volunteering organisation called Televita. SponsorT helps managers to better allocate different activities to the volunteers with the overall aims to find the more suitable match in terms of aptitude and personal inclinations. Attention is given to the description of the end-to-end aspects of the prototyped application from the problem definition to its day by day use.

A new generation of Intelligent Robots are entering our working and living environments, taking care of human-level tasks. Such robotic systems are becoming more and more important also in healthcare assistance for elderly. Indeed, recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics are fostering the diffusion of robotic agents with the capabilities needed to support both older adults and their caregivers in a variety of situations (e.g., in their homes, in hospitals, etc.). The capability of representing and reasoning about diverse kind of knowledge is crucial for allowing robotic assistants to understand the needs of the older persons as well as the status of the working environment. This paper presents a recent research initiative which aims at endowing autonomous robots with the capabilities needed to represent and reason on sensor data and to autonomously make decisions according to the inferred knowledge. The complete approach ends out being a cognitive control architecture, called Knowledge-based cOntinuous Loop (KOaLa) whose main aspect are described in this paper. The application of KOaLa to our Robin telepresence robot is also exemplified to enhance the services of older people assistance.

This paper describes the work pursued within the TV-assistdem project, an AAL initiative, the aim of which is to develop a technological tool to facilitate remote support to patients affected by Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). The idea is to exploit TV-based transmission of data and video-interactivity among health-professionals, patients, caregivers and family members to support MCI older users. The objective of TV-assistdem goes beyond the realisation of the necessary technological effort, and extends to the delivery of a longitudinal experimentation on an European scale. The paper gives an overview of the project and presents the results of the user requirements elicitation effort carried out during the first phase involving users to gather valuable indications for the platform development. A presentation of the platform functionalities is also provided and the current status of the implementation effort is finally presented.

The “Citta Educante” project aims at radically rethinking the learning environments through the application of the most advanced ICT technology. Among the different aspects of the project, the LECTurE module aims, by exploiting artificial intelligence techniques, at proposing contextualized lessons, as well as interaction requests, to the involved users. In particular the lesson’s content, is specifically tailored for the older adults and personalized by taking into account users’ psycho-physiological aspects as well as geo-localization information and temporal constraints. In this paper, after a generic introduction to the “Citta Educante” project, the LECTurE module is presented and instantiated in two relevant use cases: the on-site training, in which the system is used as a support to the classical teaching methodologies within a classroom, and the distributed training, in which the technology aims at moving and animating the teaching experience, also, “outside the classroom”, with additional stimuli for the users during a practical experience (e.g., a real visit in a museum to complement a theoretical art history lesson). The paper describes, then, the choices made for the realization of a first prototype and its embodiment into a concrete scenario which, by implementing a “treasure hunt” like game, aims at fostering older adults’ physical and cognitive activity.

This paper presents a newborn collaboration between heterogeneous AI competences. In particular, it describes current work on the integration of machine learning techniques for the automatic generation of contents for an Intelligent Tutoring System grounded on automated planning techniques. The joint use of these two approaches allows on the one hand to facilitate the task of instructional designers in defining and preparing courses, and on the other hand to dynamically support the use of content according to different users context.

IoT technology integrated in smart home environments produces a huge and heterogeneous amount of data that can be used to characterize events that occur inside an environment as well as activities that a person is performing. The knowledge that can be extracted from such data can be used to proactively facilitate the daily living of the person with physical and/or cognitive weaknesses. This paper describes work aiming at better taking advantage of those data by integrating a cognitive loop composed by a semantic representation and a decision making functionality. In particular, the paper presents results of the Knowledge-based cOntinuous Loop (KOaLa) research initiative particularly focusing on the use of semantic technology to represent and reason on sensor data to enable the triggering of proactive services toward the users in an intelligent home.

The deployment of autonomous robots capable to both socially interact and proactively offer support to human users in a common life scenario remains challenging despite the recent technical advancements. For instance, research for endowing autonomous robots with the capability of acting in “non-ideal” and partially observable environments as well as socially interacting with humans is still an area in which improvements are specifically needed. To this aim, this paper elaborates on the need for integrating different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to foster the development of personal robotic assistants continuously supporting older adults. Recently, the authors have been working on proposing an AI-based cognitive architecture that integrates knowledge representation and automated planning techniques in order to endow assistive robots with proactive and context situated abilities. This paper particularly describes a goal triggering mechanism to allow a robot to reason over the status of the user and the living environment with the aim of dynamically generating high-level goals to be planned accordingly.

This paper describes the work done on a telepresence robot named GIRAFF and part of a telecare AAL system derived from the GIRAFFPLUS project for supporting and monitoring elderly people at home. Specifically, from the long term trials in real houses, a number of user requirements have emerged that inspired changes and improvements on the robotic platform. The implementation of both multimodal communication capabilities and enhanced information services introduced new interesting questions related to human-robot interaction and specifically to usability, valence of interaction, and cognitive load required to interact with and through the robot. An experimental session based on a combination of physiological and psychological methods showed that the enhanced platform is usable, the interaction pleasant and the required workload limited. The analysis of psychophysiological correlates supported the findings from self-report measures and provides further information. It has been possible to discriminate physiological responses between multimodal interaction and the use of new services. Specifically, while usability can be specifically related to the usage of multichannel commands, positive emotions elicited by the interaction with GIRAFF seems to be mostly ascribable to the usage of services provided for the communication with another person.

The current work presents the SPEAKYACUTATTILE system, a computer based platform designed to enable its users to access a number of ICT services such as house management, health status monitoring or recreational services. It is deeply grounded on voice interaction and represents a Spoken Language System (SLS) meant to be a sort of intelligent assistant with which the users can vocally interact. The paper dwells on an experimental assessment of the system. Linear regression analysis have been carried out in order to assess the influence of system performance—in terms of dialogue efficiency metrics and dialogue quality metrics—on the perceived satisfaction of users. Results show that longer dialogues are preferred in order to positively influence the users satisfaction, suggesting the importance for people to have time for getting confident with new ICT solutions. Moreover, from the experimental analysis, it clearly emerges how system intervention should be reduced, suggesting how a good balance between user and system turns represents an important aspect for a fluid interaction. The same can be speculated for dialogues with no met requests that also tended to be associated with lower satisfaction scores. These last results support the importance for a vocal assistant to be effective in its purpose in order to be perceived as useful and satisfying.

This paper presents the outcome of the Workshop on Robot Interface Design, which was held in Genoa (Italy) over the months of January and February 2014 and was jointly organized by Polytechnic School at the University of Genoa and the National Research Council. The aim of the workshop was to study the design of physical, functional and graphical interfaces for a telepresence assistive robot, starting from the analysis of the current features of a commercial robot called Giraff (http://www.giraff.org). The fielding of the Giraff robot has been studied (within an EU-funded AAL project: ExCITE--http://www.excite-project.eu) in three different European countries as an ICT solution to support elderly people and to enhance social interaction with relatives and caregivers. The evaluation with real end-users of the Giraff brought to light a set of user requirements and issues to be improved in the robotic platform. This workshop sought to present the aspects connected to the design (in which participants had specific expertise), and to the users perception of the robot within a domestic environment. Particular attention was paid to the design of volumes, shapes and anthropometric relationships as well as elaborations on chromatic aspects and the exploitation of different kinds of material. Some of the main results of the workshop were: a design process involving different professionals such as designers, engineers and psychologists working in close contact with a group of end-users; a set of possible modifications/extensions of the robotic platform; a set of new design concepts featuring a higher level of product emotionality.

Supporting active and healthy ageing represents an opportunity for improving the quality of life of older citizens while reducing the unsustainable pressure on health systems. The GiraffPlus project aims at improving health quality by offering personalized services for end users on top of a non- invasive state- of- the- art continuous data- gathering infrastructure. Specifically, the system collects elderly daily behaviour and physiological measures from distributed sensors in living environments. In addition, GiraffPlus organizes the gathered information so as to provide customizable visualization and monitoring services to the different users of the system. This paper describes the latest results achieved within the project specifically focusing on the interactive services toward the users.

This paper presents an ongoing effort to create added value complete services for end users on top of an AAL continuous data gathering environment. It first presents the general architecture proposed by the GiraffPlus project for long term monitoring of older users at home, then describes the main choices concerning the middleware (universAAL compliant), the long-term data storage, and a user-oriented component, called DVPIS, dedicated to interaction with different users of the AAL environment. The current status of a deployed version of the system is then shortly described.

The paper presents the current findings of an almost one-year case study of fielding the Giraff robot in a real home. The testing phase, which is still running, involves an older user, affected by Parkinsons disease, and his family, in the daily usage of a telepresence robot. Initial evidence show that Giraff has become part of the daily routine of the user being judged as a valuable tool for communication and close connection with the remote user. In general, the attitude of the user towards the aid remains stable being constantly positive over time. Nevertheless we also noted an impact of the technology robustness on user’s acceptance that will be further investigated in this continuation of the study.