IBM Research has announced that it is working with academic and industrial partners in the European Union to develop an integrated approach that will help older people combat the natural reduction in cognitive capabilities -- without forcing them to learn how to use new gadgets or computer equipment. Researchers will explore building a system accessible through a television and simple remote control, touch screens projected onto smart coffee tables and voice-activated interfaces.
The joint IBM-European Union HERMES -- Cognitive Care for Active Aging project will develop a combination of home-based and mobile audio and visual devices to support memory assistance for the elderly. If successful, the project could help extend the length of independent living for the elderly by enabling them to remember critical information about their daily schedules, medication doses, social interactions and more.
The HERMES project brings together experts in fields ranging from gerontology to speech processing, and hardware integration to user-centered design, to achieve the goal of cognitively supporting older people.
"I’m really enjoying making a contribution that will help the elderly live more independently," said Alexander Sorin, lead IBM researcher for the HERMES project. "Like many others, I have an aging mother who is unable to benefit from new technology advances -- even finding it difficult to use a mobile phone. I’m looking forward to seeing technology become accessible to the elderly in a natural and user-friendly way that will help them continue to live their daily lives."
As part of the project, experts at the IBM Research Lab in Haifa are contributing technologies and research for speech transcription (speech to text), speaker identification, voice-based emotion detection, text-to-speech synthesis and spoken information retrieval.
The project’s goal is to build a prototype system that will offer three main services:
- Helping people remember what happened in the recent past, including information from conversations with the banker, doctor or family members.
- Providing the elderly with helpful reminders or prompts to manage their daily schedule.
- Creating memory fitness exercises based on games that use actual elements from the person’s life, including appointment details, people’s names or sequences of events.
This article first appeared on the IBM intranet and was written by Chani Sacharen.
Last updated on December 3, 2008