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Toward intelligent continuous assistance

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Abstract

Technology supported assistance is a research area dedicated to support both older adults and, at some level, their caregivers in a variety of situations and contexts. A number of projects doing detailed evaluation both with robots and/or ICT-based intelligent devices have identified as open challenges the need to guarantee both continuity and variability of service according to context interpretation. This paper starts from the willingness to study how both continuity and variability can be pursued by leveraging and integrating results from research areas like artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive systems, psychology and sensor networks. Some of these technological skills are needed for example by an assistive robot and still represent open challenges in AI. This paper presents a medium term research initiative aiming at synthesizing an enhanced (intelligent) control architecture for assistive robots that take advantage from the continuous flow of information provided by a sensor network. The paper presents two main results: (a) starting from the analysis of requirements coming from the real world, it envisages a conceptual cognitive architecture highlighting the functional requirements and the key capabilities characterizing an “ideal” intelligent assistive robot; (b) it presents a prototype of a testbed architecture called KOaLa (Knowledge-based cOntinuous Loop) which integrates sensor data representation, knowledge reasoning and decision making capabilities showing its novelty in a realistic scenario.

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Notes

  1. See for example the 2012 ageing report showing economic and budget projections of EU member states between 2010 and 2060—https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/news/2012-ageing-report-europe-needs-prepare_en.

  2. GiraffPlus was funded by the European Community’s Framework Programme Seven (FP7) under contract m. 288173. FP7-ICT-Challenge 5: ICT for Health, Ageing Well, Inclusion and Governance. Duration: 01-01-2012 to 31-12-2014.

  3. http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/DUL.owl.

  4. Visualization generated with TKIZ using alpha version of the TeX exporter of WebVOWL (version 1.1.3).

  5. See Apache Jena software library—https://jena.apache.org/.

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Acknowledgements

This research is partially supported by Italian ”Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca” under project “SI-ROBOTICS: SocIal ROBOTICS for active and healthy ageing” (PON 676—Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020—G.A. ARS01_01120) and by European Commission under project ShareWork (H2020—Factories of the Future—G.A. #820807).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNR - National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, ISTC, Via S. Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Alessandro Umbrico, Gabriella Cortellessa, Andrea Orlandini & Amedeo Cesta

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  1. Alessandro Umbrico
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  2. Gabriella Cortellessa
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  3. Andrea Orlandini
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  4. Amedeo Cesta
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Correspondence to Andrea Orlandini.

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Umbrico, A., Cortellessa, G., Orlandini, A. et al. Toward intelligent continuous assistance. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 12, 4513–4527 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-020-01766-w

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