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Social support agents for older adults: longitudinal affective computing in the home

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Abstract

Loneliness and social isolation are significant problems in older adult populations. We describe the design of a multimodal conversational agent-based system designed to provide longitudinal social support to isolated older adults. Results from a requirements analysis study and a remote “Wizard-of-Oz” study are presented that inform the design of the autonomous social support agent. An exploratory pilot study was conducted in which the agent was placed in the homes of 14 older adults for a week. Results indicate high levels of acceptance and satisfaction of the system. Results also indicate that when the agent proactively draws elders into interactions, triggered by a motion sensor, it is more effective at addressing loneliness than when the agent passively relies upon elders to initiate interactions. We discuss future research opportunities for affective computing to address this important societal problem.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Candace Sidner and the entire of the WPI team for their collaboration on the AlwaysOn project, and Barbara Barry for preliminary work on the qualitative analysis. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1012086. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Lazlo Ring, Lin Shi, Kathleen Totzke & Timothy Bickmore

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  1. Lazlo Ring
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  2. Lin Shi
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  3. Kathleen Totzke
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  4. Timothy Bickmore
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Correspondence to Lazlo Ring.

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Ring, L., Shi, L., Totzke, K. et al. Social support agents for older adults: longitudinal affective computing in the home. J Multimodal User Interfaces 9, 79–88 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-014-0157-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-014-0157-0

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