Abstract
This column aims to describe the characteristics of current cyberpsychology research in Europe. In particular, CyberEurope aims at describing the leading research groups and projects running on the other side of the Ocean.
The EU-funded ALFRED project has developed a mobile, personalized assistant for older people that helps them to stay independent, coordinates with careers, and fosters social inclusion for the elderly.
The ALFRED—Personal Interactive Assistant for Independent Living and Active Ageing (
Dr. Sven Abels, the ALFRED project coordinator, is extremely pleased with the key results and innovations of the project. “ALFRED achieved a large amount of key technology results, including excellence in voice interaction (allowing older people to talk directly to the ALFRED Butler), serious games, data storage, and many other domains,” he commented.
Moreover, his team is most proud of the fact that they have managed to find a balance between the technology level and the user level. “In many cases, RTD outcomes are dedicated towards technology enthusiasts,” Dr. Abels explained. “In ALFRED, we have integrated users right from the beginning and we are hiding all technology aspects under the hood so that older people can use ALFRED without having to understand the technological details behind our research.”
A Project of Four Pillars
The project itself is organized around four key pillars that provide the framework for the ALFRED virtual assistant. The first pillar consists of a user-driven interaction assistant, which aims to empower individuals with age-related dependencies to live successfully independently for longer by delivering a virtual butler with seamless support for tasks inside and outside of the home.
“This is essentially the core technology when interacting with ALFRED, as people can directly speak to the system—just like people are able to interact with Apple's Siri, but in a more flexible and extendible way,” Dr. Abels outlined. Users can ask ALFRED specific questions and issue commands, for example telling it to create a list of forthcoming appointments. “This voice-based interaction gives users a means to interact with ALFRED without having to understand the technology,” continued Dr. Abels. “Consequently, it is also well-suited as a result for users who may not have strong eyesight.”
The second pillar is based on voice-based interaction and is focused on actively encouraging social participation by older people by suggesting and managing events and other social activities. This is done through an adaptive user profile that is fully controlled by the user. The third pillar is dedicated toward personalized care processes, and it does this through direct access to key vital signs for (informal) carers, allowing the alarm to be raised in the case of a medical emergency. Finally, the fourth pillar concentrates on the prevention of physical and cognitive impairments. This is achieved through integrating personalized serious games, which aim toward improving the specific physical and cognitive needs of the user.
An ALFRED Marketplace
One of the core components of the ALFRED system was the development of the ALFRED Open Platform that allowed third-party developers to produce new functionalities in the form of apps. This approach, which is compatible with the Android operating system, will hopefully lead to the growth of an independent living and active aging sector designed specifically for older people.
“ALFRED will start with a core set of 25 apps, which have been created by the project team,” Dr. Abels said. “These apps will be rather simple and aim to provide a set for users hand that are already fully usable but also to provide a blueprint for developers to take inspiration when creating new apps.” To encourage third-party developers, the project team offer a flexible runtime environment allowing developers to integrate apps seamlessly to ALFRED—including the crucial voice interaction features.
Challenges and Next Steps
Dr. Abels is able to say proudly that the project has been planned and enacted in a manner that has allowed his team to implement all planned features in time and to budget. However, there were some challenges that they had to overcome. “We learnt that the user tests took a bit more time than estimated, and we also learnt that the demand for being able to naturally talk to ALFRED was even bigger than expected,” Dr. Abels explained. He also outlined how they realized that different users will interact with ALFRED in different ways. So, they had to ensure that the system is flexible enough to handle multiple ways of requesting the same service or piece of information.