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Report for YR-RISE Workshop in Odense Congress Center, Denmark

Wei Jun

Date: 15-17 September, 2010

Conference: AAL Forum- Ambient Assisted Living Joint Program

YR-RISE workshop-Young Researchers’ workshop: Research on Innovative solutions for elderly

Venue: Odense Congress Center, Odense, Denmark


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Abstract:

Added by WeijunThe Ambient Assisted Living Joint Program is a new joint research and development funding activity by 23 European Members and Associated States with the financial support of the European Community provided on the basis of article 185 of the EC treaty.

The overall objective of the program is to enhance the quality of life of older people and strengthen the industrial base in Europe through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

In the context of the “AAL Forum Odense 2010” the “Young Researchers and PhD workshop” involves students and young researchers from various backgrounds, presenting their research towards technical solutions for the elderly people. There are three tracks: 1.Ambient Intelligence and Health Care in Elderly; 2.Communication technologies and interfaces; 3. Serious Games, Robotics and Social Networks. I am presenting the Food Media project in track 2.







Main Itinerary:

Sep 15th: 10:00am ~05:30pm, teaser presentation and poster session of Young Researchers

In the 2-minite teaser presentation, I presented the food media project Added by Weijun


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After the official opening of the AAL forum, then come the poster presentation and the followed discussion from the whole workshop.

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After the poster presentation, a discussion was followed about this project. Some concerns like how would food be treated like a communication media to enhance the communication between elderly and young, why the food would be more natural for the elderly, why bother to print out food instead of just sending the food directly are queried and discussed. What’s more, they asked about the main food materials used in the system. Since the western people eat totally different food from us Asians. For them, the main food is bread and butter instead of rice. Also, there were many comments and suggestions from the Chairs and the peer PhD students. Such as, how to make the communication two-way since now it's only sending and receiving in one direction, how to make the message more appealing to elderly and what if the elderly not like the food sent from the young or they are allergic to the food material? Also the time issue for printing out the desired pattern of food, how long would it take to print out the food?

There were also some other interesting projects related to elderly people. Many of them are about assisted living for elderly at home, and also health monitoring. Some are about games for the elderly.

This is the robot for guiding blind people. It gives out different responds when affronted with different barriers.


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Sep 16th: 03:00pm ~05:30pm, poster session to the whole AAL forum

Since we are doing the poster session to the whole AAL forum in the afternoon, I had time to look around and attend several talks. There are many tracks in the forum, many of which are about economics, markets, innovations, and also for research, which we are involved in.

1. '''''i Home Lab

http://www.ihomelab.ch/index.php?id=14&L=1

Their research allows people to live comfortably and safely in their homes up to an old age.

The intelligent home is aware of its inhabitants. It learns from them, recognizes their behavior patterns automatically and provides unobtrusive support for their daily life. Wireless sensor networks collect and communicate vital data, localize people, detect falls and alarm their relatives on demand….

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2. '''''Giraff – Social connection for home care

The Giraff is a device that allows caregivers with no prior computer experience to virtually enter a home and conduct a natural visit just as if they were physically there.

http://www.giraff.org/

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3. 'EYE-C : Video processing for in-house situation awareness

Designed as a video analytic tool, Eye-C acts as an actual behavior sensor. Thanks to a comprehensive processing of each pixel of each frame of input video, Eye-C reveals a scene description from video data measurement, allowing in-house situation awareness.

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4. AWARE: Aging workforce towards an active retirement

The AWARE project aims at developing an effective solution at the European level for social inclusion of elderly people and at preparing older workers for transition to retirement. This objective will be achieved by providing skills in the use of ICTs for social participation and an ICT-based tool that can enable social interaction of both groups in order to promote an active aging and to fight against consequences that could arise after retirement, such as depression, loneliness and isolation.

http://www.ibv.org/en.html


5. Robot –like machine to serve food and water

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Then I attended the talk.

PL3: Societal challenges – It is not just about technology

Chair: Elizabeth Mestheneos, President, AGE platform Europe

John Beard, Director of the Department of Aging and Life Course at the World Health Organization


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After lunch, I went to the session of research track, where 3 presenters introduced their research projects.


  1. Birgit U. Stetina, University of Vienna: Vital vs. Virtual – VR and Real-life interaction. Exploring New Ways in Emotion Research and Clinical Intervention.She talked about the psychological effects of interacting with real dog and virtual dogs in her experiments.
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Their experiment compared the different responses from groups when interacting with real dog and virtual dog, including another control group. The results are that people show higher level of positive emotions after interacting with both real and virtual dogs than the control group, but higher level of pretest positive emotions with virtual dogs than real dogs. Also, the large decrease of negative emotions between pre-test and post-test when interacting with virtual dogs.

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The factor they use is called HRV-heart rate variability, is the variation of beat-to-beat intervals, low HRV is associated with cardiac morbidity and mortality.

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2. OLDES Project

OLDES- Old People’s e-services at home

OLDES is an EU co-funded project under the IST Program that intends to offer new technological solutions to improve the quality of life of older people, through the development of a very low cost and easy to use entertainment and health care platform, designed to ease the life of the elderly in their homes.

http://www.oldes.eu/

http://www.oldes.eu/files/documenti//201002//OLDES-compensationmanagement.pdf


3. Enhancing Aml flexibility in BrainAble

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Sep 17th: 10:00am ~01:30pm, Ray Kurzweil: Independent living in an age of Accelerating Technology

World leading entrepreneur, inventor and futurist

Only technology can provide the scale to overcome the challenges with which human society has struggled for generations. Within a couple of decades non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence and will necessarily soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nano robots will be deeply integrated in the environment, our bodies and our brains, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses, experience 'beaming', and enhanced human intelligence. These emerging technologies will be a great leveler in eliminating the handicaps associated with sensory and physical disabilities.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/

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