Laura Villa – video: An Affective and Proactive Robot …
II Turing Machine Awards for the best Final Projects (TFE) 2022. The TFG entitled "An Affective and Proactive Robot for assisted living of older adults at homee” developed by Laura Villa and directed by Professor Ramón Hervás, was recognized with two of the prizes: AULA SMACT-Avanttic first prize, and AULA NTT Data first prize, both endowed with €1.000.
Assistance and emotional support for the elderly is a necessity in society. Many of them live alone, which gives rise to problems related to depression and loneliness. However, it is difficult to monitor emotions and psychological state due to the time and human and financial resources required for it. Furthermore, these problems are aggravated by the digital divide, which leads to isolation and other social difficulties in older people, reducing their independence, autonomy and quality of life.
Currently, social robots and home assistants are becoming more and more popular. These assistive robots provide services that try to solve these types of problems that older people encounter. Despite this, the behavior of these assistants is often not useful beyond acting as Internet browsers based on voice interaction. This results in them being perceived as passive, unnatural, antisocial, and "inhuman," as they are unable to carry on conversations, initiate interactions, or show some degree of empathy. In this context of help and support for health, it is important that social robots include affective and social aspects that ensure that they are accepted and trusted.
EVA is a robotic platform created at CICESE, with an open hardware approach, to which other academic institutions such as the University of California and the University of Castilla-La Mancha are also contributing, adding new services, interactions and applications. This Final Degree Project consists of the development of a social robot housed in the EVA robotic platform. The objective of the developed robot is to improve the quality of life, autonomy and independence of the elderly, and also mitigate loneliness and other emotional problems that may arise. To obtain user acceptance and achieve a more natural, social and affective behavior that is not passive, the robot integrates proactivity, affectivity and natural interactions. This behavior has been achieved mainly through: a) EVA can start conversations by making proactive interventions and worrying about the user through the appearance of certain events; b) using the new activation method, wakeface, in which the robot is activated when you look at it, being a more “human” and natural way to start conversations; c) offering affective behavior by analyzing emotions and showing emotions through expressions with the eyes; d) facial recognition of the user and recognition of emotions in text/requests, to provide personalized and affective communication, showing concern; and e) Telegram management and control functionalities, to reduce the digital gap and help communicate with family members (as an example of assistive functionality).
This has been achieved through the use of computational techniques for the processing and synchronization of the data coming from the robot's sensors, in which efficiency has been key in the integration and concurrent execution of all the services, due to the fact that it is of a low computational power system. Therefore, EVA could be installed in the home, to detect the user's emotions in conversations and carry out actions and suggestions that mitigate the aforementioned difficulties, as well as reduce the digital divide, making life easier and happier for older people.
In the same line of work, Laura Villa received an award in the last edition of the UCAmI (December 2022)
Finally, our best presentation awards go to Laura Villa, Sebastián Toro-Guajardo and Marcos Lupión Lorente pic.twitter.com/j4vDNXYfUO
— UCAmI 2023 (@UCAmIIWAAL) December 4, 2022
