scholarly journals A mobile augmented reality assistive technology for the elderly

Comunicar ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (45) ◽  
pp. 65-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Saracchini ◽  
Carlos Catalina-Ortega ◽  
Luca Bordoni

Modern technology offers many facilities, but elderly people are often unable to enjoy them fully because they feel discouraged or intimidated by modern devices, and hus become progressively isolated in a society where Internet communication and ICT knowledge are essential. In this paper we present a study performed during the Nacodeal Project, which aims to offer a technological solution that may improve elderly people's every day autonomy and life quality through the integration of ICTs. In order to achieve this goal, state-of-art Augmented Reality technology was developed along with carefully designed Internet services and interfaces for mobile devices. Such technology only requires the infrastructure which already exists in most residences and health-care centres. We present the design of a prototypical system consisting of a tablet and a wearable AR system, and the evaluation of its impact on the social interaction of its users as well its acceptance and usability. This evaluation was performed, through focus groups and individual pilot tests, on 48 participants that included elderly people, caregivers and experts. Their feedback leads us to the conclusion that there are significant benefits to be gained and much interest among the elderly in assistive AR-based ICTs, particularly in relation to the communication and autonomy that they may provide. Las posibilidades que ofrecen las tecnologías son muchas, sin embargo, las personas mayores son a menudo incapaces de disfrutar de ellas plenamente, sintiéndose desanimadas o intimidadas por estos nuevos dispositivos. Esto les lleva a un progresivo aislamiento en una sociedad donde es esencial conocer las distintas formas de comunicación a través de Internet y las TIC. En este trabajo presentamos un estudio realizado durante el proyecto Nacodeal, cuyo objetivo es ofrecer una solución tecnológica para proporcionar autonomía y una mejor calidad de vida para las personas mayores durante sus actividades diarias mediante la integración de las TIC. Para lograr este objetivo se ha desarrollado tecnología puntera en realidad aumentada (RA), así como servicios de Internet e interfaces para dispositivos móviles especialmente diseñados para personas mayores. Estas tecnologías emplean la infraestructura presente en la mayoría de casas y centros de cuidados de mayores. Presentamos un prototipo de sistema compuesto por una tableta y un dispositivo de RA portátil, así como el análisis del impacto social en la interacción con usuarios y la valoración de la aceptación y usabilidad. Esta evaluación se llevó a cabo a través de grupos focales y pruebas piloto individuales con 48 participantes: ancianos, cuidadores y expertos. Sus comentarios concluyen que existen fuertes beneficios e intereses por parte de las personas mayores en las TIC asistenciales basadas en RA, especialmente en los aspectos relacionados con la comunicación y autonomía.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 4792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsao ◽  
Shu ◽  
Lan

Through virtual interaction and multivariate communication, the social interaction and life satisfaction of elderly people can be improved. This study integrated virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to construct a visualized reminiscence therapy system, which provides not only reminiscence entertainment but may also aid in dementia prevention for healthy and sub-healthy (a therapeutic working concept which defines an intermediate stage between health and disease) elderly people. Images taken by an LG 360 CAM are primarily introduced into Power Director 360 as the guide interface. The special effects are joined using After Effects. With the model constructed under 3ds Max, the reminiscence therapy system integrated by virtual reality and augmented reality is then established by the Unity engine. It is shown that the developed 3D ancient building model can be used by Samsung Note 5 smartphones as well as VR CASE glasses to increase the immersive experience for the elderly. Through nostalgic elements triggered by the AR/VR three-dimensional model and video/audio interaction, the feasibility of our integrated system for reminiscence therapy is thus verified. Through reminiscence therapy, memories and thoughts can fully be activated as a therapy for elderly people. The visualized reality system developed in this study can further promote the social interactional satisfaction of elderly people.


2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 409
Author(s):  
Patrícia Costa dos Santos da Silva ◽  
Fábio De Souza Terra ◽  
Alessandra Domingues da Silva Graciano ◽  
Elen Carolina Rossignolli Magalhães ◽  
Wanda Aparecida Lopes Dos Santos

ABSTRACTObjective: to assess life satisfaction of elderly people practicing physical activity in social projects. Method: this is a study with a descriptive and transversal design carried out with 37 elderly people practicing physical activity in social projects in the southern Minas Gerais state, Brazil. Two instruments were used for data collection, one aiming to characterize the sample and another one intending to assess life satisfaction. The mean score, calculated for the instrument to assess life satisfaction, consisted in the attribution of values to the "nominal answers", so that it was possible to understand the variation among them and establish an answer representing the perception of most of the interviewed individuals. This research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Universidade Jose do Rosario Vellano (Protocol 269-2010). Results: with regard to the time of participation in social projects, it was found that 32.4% of the individuals participate in projects involving physical activity for 3-4 years. Regarding chronic diseases presented by the elderly people, it was found that 86.4% have some disease, being high blood pressure the most reported one. Considering life satisfaction, it was found a mean total score of 3.88; in the physical health aspect, the score was 3.94; in the mental health aspect, 3.81; in the physical capacity aspect, 3.66; and in the social involvement, 4.14. Conclusion: physical activity, along with the participation in social projects, allows the elderly person's resocialization, improvements to her/his quality of life, and promotion of citizenship. Descriptors: elderly; physical activity; health of the elderly; old age assistance; aging.RESUMOObjetivo: avaliar a satisfação com a vida de idosos praticantes de atividade física em projetos sociais. Método: trata-se de estudo de caráter descritivo com delineamento transversal realizado com 37 idosos praticantes de atividade física em projetos sociais no sul de Minas Gerais. Para a coleta de dados foram utilizados dois instrumentos, um destinado à caracterização da amostra e outro para avaliação da satisfação com a vida. O escore médio, calculado para o instrumento de avaliação da satisfação com a vida, consistiu na atribuição de valores às “respostas nominais”, de tal forma que se possibilitasse entender a variação entre elas e estabelecer uma resposta que representa a percepção da maioria dos entrevistados. Esta pesquisa foi aprovada pelo Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa da Universidade José do Rosário Vellano (Protocolo n. 269/2010). Resultados: com relação ao tempo de participação em projetos sociais, constatou-se que 32,4% dos indivíduos participam de projetos voltados a atividade física há 3-4 anos. Em relação às doenças crônicas apresentadas pelos idosos, constatou-se que 86,4% possuem alguma doença, sendo a hipertensão arterial a mais relatada. Considerando-se a satisfação com a vida, encontrou-se um escore total médio de 3,88; no aspecto saúde física, o escore foi de 3,94; no aspecto saúde mental, 3,81; no aspecto capacidade física, 3,66; e no envolvimento social, 4,14. Conclusão: a atividade física, juntamente com a participação em projetos sociais, possibilita a ressocialização do idoso, melhorias em sua qualidade de vida e promoção da cidadania. Descritores: idoso; atividade física; saúde do idoso; assistência a idosos; envelhecimento.RESUMENObjetivo: evaluar la satisfacción con la vida de los ancianos practicantes de actividad física en proyectos sociales. Método: esto es un estudio de carácter descriptivo con diseño transversal realizado con 37 ancianos practicantes de actividad física en proyectos sociales en el sur del estado de Minas Gerais, Brasil. Para la recogida de datos fueron utilizados dos instrumentos, uno para la caracterización de la muestra y otro para evaluación de la satisfacción con la vida. La puntuación media, calculada para el instrumento de evaluación de la satisfacción con la vida, consistió en la atribución de valores a las "respuestas nominales", de tal manera que se pudiese comprender la variación entre ellas y establecer una respuesta que representa la percepción de la mayoría de los entrevistados. Esta investigación fue aprobada por el Comité de Ética en Investigación de la Universidade José do Rosário Vellano (Protocolo 269/2010). Resultados: con relación al tiempo de participación en proyectos sociales, se constató que 32,4% de los individuos participan en proyectos de actividad física hay 3-4 años. En cuanto a las enfermedades crónicas presentadas por los ancianos, se constató que 86,4% tienen alguna enfermedad, siendo la hipertensión arterial la más reportada. Considerándose la satisfacción con la vida, se encontró una puntuación total media de 3,88; en el aspecto salud física, la puntuación fue de 3,94; en en el envolvimiento social, 4,14. Conclusión: la actividad física, junto con la participación en proyectos sociales, posibilita la resocialización del anciano, mejoras eel aspecto salud mental, 3,81; en el aspecto capacidad física, 3,66; y n su calidad de vida y promoción de la ciudadanía. Descriptores: anciano; actividad física; salud del anciano; asistencia a los ancianos; envejecimiento.


Author(s):  
Tomas Brusell

When modern technology permeates every corner of life, there are ignited more and more hopes among the disabled to be compensated for the loss of mobility and participation in normal life, and with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Exoskeleton Technologies and truly hands free technologies (HMI), it's possible for the disabled to be included in the social and pedagogic spheres, especially via computers and smartphones with social media apps and digital instruments for Augmented Reality (AR) .In this paper a nouvel HMI technology is presented with relevance for the inclusion of disabled in every day life with specific focus on the future development of "smart cities" and "smart homes".


Author(s):  
Malek Alaoui ◽  
Myriam Lewkowicz

Encouraging elderly people to stay at home as long as possible is associated with a higher risk of social isolation. Nowadays, aging well at home cannot be reduced to the management of physical and cognitive frailties and technologies should also tackle the quality of life of the elderly by fostering their social interactions. However, designing appropriate services and ensuring their adoption remain open questions, to which we try to provide answers at the methodological and instrumental levels. The authors present here a Living Lab approach to design communication services for elderly people at home. They illustrate this approach by describing their participation in a European project aiming at developing and evaluating Social TV services and they conclude with recommendations for the successful socio-technical design of services that foster the social engagement of elderly people.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1605-1614
Author(s):  
K Krisdiyanti ◽  
Dyah Putri Aryati

AbstractThe increasing number of the elderly population is a phenomenom that occurs today. The high level of dependence of the elderly causes the elderly to have the potential to be placed in care homes. The elderly are individuals who hane a high risk of isease and stressors. This, of course, requires efforts to ensure the life of the elderly, not only seen from fulfillment of the needs of the elderly but also the life quality of the eldely. The study aims to describe the quality of life of the elderly who live in care homes. The study used a literature review method by searching for articles in the Pubmed database, and google sholar. The search was conducted by combining keywords: “Elderly, “Elderly people”, “Quality of life”, “WHOQOL-BREF”, and “Nursing home” with the year 2011-2021. Participants in this study were 395 respondents of elderly living in care homes. The results of the literature review of 6 articles showed that there are 73 respondents (18,5%) with low category of life quality, 195 respondents (49,9%) with medium category of life quality, and 127 repondents (32,1%) high category of the life quality. From this study, it can be concluded that the quality of life of the elderly living in care homes is mostly (49,9%) in moderate category. The role of nurses is needed to improve the quality of life of the elderly who live in care homes.Keywords: care homes; elderly; quality of life; WHOQOL-BREF AbstrakTerjadinya peningkatan jumlah populasi lanjut usia merupakan fenomena yang terjadi saat ini. Tingkat ketergantungan lansia yang tinggi mengakibatkan lansia berpontesi untuk ditempatkan di panti sosial. Lansia merupakan individu yang memiliki resiko tinggi dan rentan terhadap penyakit serta stresor. Hal ini tentunya dibutuhkan upaya untuk menjamin hidup lansia, tidak hanya dilihat dari pemenuhan kebutuhan lansia namun juga dilihat dari kualitas hidup lansia. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui gambaran kualitas hidup lansia yang tinggal di panti sosial. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode literature review, untuk pencarian artikel dengan mengakses database Pubmed, dan googlescholar. Pencarian dilakukan dengan mengkombinasi kata kunci: “elderly”, “elderly people”, “Quality of life”, “WHOQOL-BREF”, “Nursing home” dengan batasan tahun 2011-2021. Partisipan pada studi ini adalah lansia yang tinggal di panti sosial dengan total 395 lansia. Hasil penelitian literature review dari 6 artikel menunjukan kualitas hidup lansia dengan kategori rendah 73 responden (18,5%), sedang 195 responden (49,9%) dan tinggi 127 responden (32,1%). Dari penelitian ini diketahui bahwa kualitas hidup lansia yang tinggal di panti sosial sebagian besar (49,9%) dalam kategori sedang. Perlu adanya peran perawat untuk meningkatkan kualitas hidup lansia yang tinggal di panti sosial.Kata kunci : kualitas hidup; lansia; panti sosial; WHOQOL-BREF


Author(s):  
Atef ATA ◽  
N. M. Fonseca Ferreira

Over the engineering history, environmental and social needs inspire the development and innovation of many wonderful applications. For example, when the industrial robots entered our industrial life, great advances especially in automotive industry where the industrial robots cover about 90 % of the car industry activities started to change our own life. As the number of elderly people is increasing rapidly all over the world, this requires us to focus on their needs as their children left them alone in our busy daily life. Mechatronics and robotics can offer many possibilities to help elderly people by providing smart solutions for their daily needs as well as entertaining them during their lonely long stay at their homes. Many companies are providing smart mobile robots in different platforms (wheeled or walking) to help the elderly people depend on themselves in receiving their food and medicine at prescheduled times. Other companies are interested in providing smart wheel chairs to help the elderly people navigate indoor and outdoor freely and conveniently without any external help. Meanwhile, some companies are providing entertainment robots in different shapes to talk, play and communicate with elderly people in a nice way. The objective of this paper is to explore the mechatronics and robotics capabilities to assist elderly people and to make their life easier, comfortable and self-governing without any external help. This paper will highlight also the effect of the environment and the social needs in inspiring new innovations. As an example, the innovations by Badi Az-Zaman Ismail Al-Jazari, a Muslim scientist, will be investigated. This paper is going to discuss also the idea and the motivation behind two of Al-Jazari’s robotic applications (Although the term robot was not coined at that time). These two devices are the washing hands and the peacock fountain. Although he used to apply mechanical structure and fluid for controlling the motion of the two devices, they were very beautiful and resemble some of the robotic applications nowadays.   


Author(s):  
Cristina Bosch-Farré ◽  
Maria Carmen Malagón-Aguilera ◽  
David Ballester-Ferrando ◽  
Carme Bertran-Noguer ◽  
Anna Bonmatí-Tomàs ◽  
...  

Background: Most elderly people wish to grow old at their own homes. The sociodemographic characteristics; home and neighbourhood conditions; and the social services support and networks are determinants in the possibility of “ageing in place”. The present study aimed to explore the ageing in place phenomenon, as well as the enablers and barriers that interact in a healthy ageing from the perspective of the elderly connected to local entities. Methods: A generic qualitative design was proposed in the Health Region of Girona in Catalonia (Spain). Seventy-one elderly people were purposefully selected. Six focus groups were conducted, and data were thematically analysed. Results: Three key themes were generated: (1) Participants experienced ageing differently. The physical and mental health, the family environment and financial stability were key elements for life quality. (2) The perception of the elderly’s role in the community depended on their age, health status and attitude towards life. (3) The participants identified several enablers and barriers to healthy ageing in place. Conclusions: The promotion of older people’s autonomy and wellbeing, together with the creation of an active network of health and social services, may improve the possibility for elderly to age at home and avoid or delay institutionalisation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 9345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Shao ◽  
I-Jui Lee

In the stage of aging society and population aging, the social needs of the elderly are widely discussed by researchers. Especially driven by the demand of tele-medical treatment and tele-rehabilitation therapy, it is vital for the elderly to integrate into virtual communities by combining social virtual reality (VR) with different medical services and entertainment needs. In addition, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, it is more difficult for people to have face-to-face contacts. With more remote consultation, entertainment and virtual social connectivity, the application of social VR is more urgent and valuable. However, there is little discussion on the acceptability and influencing factors of social VR among the elderly at present. Therefore, in order to get further data, we used (1) early stage semi-structured interviews and then (2) Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) questionnaires for investigation. One hundred fourteen elderly people aged 60–89 living in the metropolitan area of Taipei were taken as the subjects. To help them understand the situation and state of using social VR, these elderly people were asked to use a head-mounted display (HMD) to experience social VR games. The preliminary results showed that the elderly had obvious preference for entertainment (32.4%) and medical treatment (31.3%). The interview showed that this was related to the physiological condition or medical needs of the age range. In order to further understand how social VR would affect the social life of the elderly, we proposed the further demand structure of UTAUT Model based on the interview of both experts and the elderly. The model structures include (1) Performance Expectancy, (2) Perceived Enjoyment, (3) Social Influence, (4) User Attitude, (5) Behavioral Intention, and so on. These structures were applied to conduct interviews and questionnaires to find out the influence extent and relevance of the elderly on different structural needs, and suggestions were given accordingly. The results of the above interviews showed that (1) the elderly thought that the functions of entertaining and interacting of social VR could increase their social opportunities, and also meet medical needs (teleconference, cognitive decline, etc.), (2) the closeness of social relations (between family members, friends, doctors, and places), and also affect the relevance of Perceived Enjoyment (β = 0.77, p = 0.000 < 0.05). The results of these phenomena and interviews showed the interplay between the demand structures and their special relevance. They also indicated that as to social VR technologies, various demands and functional issues of the elderly need to be considered, and these demands would appear in the subtle usage, and different social VR interfaces and functions would emerge based on their special living ways and physical and psychological demands.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjan Cugmas ◽  
Anuška Ferligoj ◽  
Tina Kogovšek ◽  
Zenel Batagelj

Population ageing requires society to adjust by ensuring additional types of services and assistance for elderly people. These may be provided by either organized services and sources of informal social support. The latter is especially important since a lack of social support is associated with a lower level of psychological and physical well-being. During the Covid-19 pandemic, social support for the elderly has proven to be even more crucial, also due to physical distancing. Therefore, this study aims to identify and describe the various types of personal social support networks of the elderly population during the coronavirus pandemic. To this end, a survey of Slovenians older than 64 years was conducted from April 25 to May 4, 2020 on a probability Web-panel-based sample (n = 605). The ego-networks were clustered by a hierarchical clustering approach for symbolic data. Clustering was performed for different types of social support (socializing, instrumental support, emotional support) and different characteristics of the social support networks (i.e., type of relationship, number of contacts, geographical distance). The results show that most of the elderly population in Slovenia have a satisfactory social support network, while the share of those without any (accessible) source of social support is significant. The results are particularly valuable for sustainable care policy planning, crisis intervention planning as well as any future waves of the coronavirus.


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