Multimodal Interface for Elderly People

With the continuous ageing of the population, the demand for different healthcare services is increasing at a fast pace. At the same time, the number of caregivers is limited and the cost of well-being is increasing. Therefore, there is a recognized need for technologies that assist elderly people in their daily activities and ensure their safety along with their social integration while maintaining a higher degree of independence. One important aspect in the development of such technologies is their easy acceptance by elderly users. Traditional human-machine interfaces have always represented a barrier for the acceptance of new devices by non-technical people in general and by elderly or people with special needs in particular. In this paper, we propose a multimodal interface designed to match the requirements of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems and to fulfill the needs of elderly people who are the main users of this interface. The interface is multilingual, it supports two languages (English and Romanian) and it can process both speech and gesture commands. The interface is developed using HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 and integrates Google Speech Service along with other services. It is able to adapt itself to any screen size and to work flawlessly across different platforms. The interface was developed and tested within the "Artificial intelligent ecosystem for self-management and sustainable quality of life in AAL" (CAMI) project. Both the interface and the results of laboratory tests are presented in this paper.