Designing a Tangible User Interface (TUI) for the Elderly Based on Their Motivations and Game Elements

The elderly population has grown significantly in recent years, requiring strategies focused on promoting active aging to improve health and well-being. It may be achieved in many ways, including using technology for this population. We propose an interactive system for older adults based on a tangible user interface. A group of 10 experts conducted a heuristic evaluation of a system of this type utilizing a questionnaire and obtaining satisfactory results. This study evaluated the older adult population's fun and pervasive game experience. The results will provide a basis for continuing to build this interactive system to promote active aging in older adults, either at the cognitive or physical level, depending on the applied approach.

Designing Tangibles to Support Emotion Logging for Older Adults: Development and Usability Study

BACKGROUND

The global population is aging, leading to shifts in health care needs. In addition to developing technology to support physical health, there is an increasing recognition of the need to consider how technology can support emotional health. This raises the question of how to design devices that older adults can interact with to log their emotions.

OBJECTIVE

We designed and developed 2 novel tangible devices, inspired by existing paper-based scales of emotions. The findings from a field trial of these devices with older adults are reported.

METHODS

Using interviews, field deployment, and fixed logging tasks, we assessed the developed devices.

RESULTS

Our results demonstrate that the tangible devices provided data comparable with standardized psychological scales of emotion. The participants developed their own patterns of use around the devices, and their experience of using the devices uncovered a variety of design considerations. We discuss the difficulty of customizing devices for specific user needs while logging data comparable to psychological scales of emotion. We also highlight the value of reflecting on sparse emotional data.

CONCLUSIONS

Our work demonstrates the potential for tangible emotional logging devices. It also supports further research on whether such devices can support the emotional health of older adults by encouraging reflection of their emotional state.

Augmented Reality for Human-Robot Collaboration and Cooperation in Industrial Applications: A Systematic Literature Review

With the continuously growing usage of collaborative robots in industry, the need for achieving a seamless human-robot interaction has also increased, considering that it is a key factor towards reaching a more flexible, effective, and efficient production line. As a prominent and prospective tool to support the human operator to understand and interact with robots, Augmented Reality (AR) has been employed in numerous human-robot collaborative and cooperative industrial applications. Therefore, this systematic literature review critically appraises 32 papers' published between 2016 and 2021 to identify the main employed AR technologies, outline the current state of the art of augmented reality for human-robot collaboration and cooperation, and point out future developments for this research field. Results suggest that this is still an expanding research field, especially with the advent of recent advancements regarding head-mounted displays (HMDs). Moreover, projector-based and HMDs developed approaches are showing promising positive influences over operator-related aspects such as performance, task awareness, and safety feeling, even though HMDs need further maturation in ergonomic aspects. Further research should focus on large-scale assessment of the proposed solutions in industrial environments, involving the solution's target audience, and on establishing standards and guidelines for developing AR assistance systems.

A Systematic Literature Review on Particle Swarm Optimization Techniques for Medical Diseases Detection

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the domain of computer science that focuses on the development of machines that operate like humans. In the field of AI, medical disease detection is an instantly growing domain of research. In the past years, numerous endeavours have been made for the improvements of medical disease detection, because the errors and problems in medical disease detection cause serious wrong medical treatment. Meta-heuristic techniques have been frequently utilized for the detection of medical diseases and promise better accuracy of perception and prediction of diseases in the domain of biomedical. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a swarm-based intelligent stochastic search technique encouraged from the intrinsic manner of bee swarm during the searching of their food source. Consequently, for the versatility of numerical experimentation, PSO has been mostly applied to address the diverse kinds of optimization problems. However, the PSO techniques are frequently adopted for the detection of diseases but there is still a gap in the comparative survey. This paper presents an insight into the diagnosis of medical diseases in health care using various PSO approaches. This study presents to deliver a systematic literature review of current PSO approaches for knowledge discovery in the field of disease detection. The systematic analysis discloses the potential research areas of PSO strategies as well as the research gaps, although, the main goal is to provide the directions for future enhancement and development in this area. This paper gives a systematic survey of this conceptual model for the advanced research, which has been explored in the specified literature to date. This review comprehends the fundamental concepts, theoretical foundations, and conventional application fields. It is predicted that our study will be beneficial for the researchers to review the PSO algorithms in-depth for disease detection. Several challenges that can be undertaken to move the field forward are discussed according to the current state of the PSO strategies in health care.

e-Health Technological Ecosystems: Advanced Solutions to Support Informal Caregivers and Vulnerable Populations During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Introduction: This study highlights the importance of technological ecosystems in supporting informal caregivers and vulnerable populations in coping with the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods: This study integrates the available literature on internet of things (IoT) e-health ecosystem and informal care. Results: In the first part of this article, we describe the health consequences of quarantine and isolation and outline the potential role of informal care in containing the risk of spreading the infection and reducing the burden on the health care system. Then, we present an overview of the characteristics of emerging technological ecosystems in health care and how they can be adopted as a strategic option to achieve different goals: (1) support informal carers to help vulnerable populations during quarantine and isolation and facilitate the recovery process; (2) promote the adoption of e-health and telemedicine resources to reduce the well-documented burden experienced by caregivers; and (3) lessen the various forms of digital disadvantage among vulnerable individuals, who are at more risk to be digitally excluded. In the last part of this work, we introduce solutions to overcome potential challenges related to the development and adoption of advanced technological ecosystems and propose a reflection on the legacy of COVID-19 on telemedicine. Conclusions: Thanks to the disruptive potential of IoT for health and wellness promotion, technological ecosystems emerge as a valuable resource to support both informal carers and vulnerable populations. The main factors that represent a strategic advantage of a technological ecosystem are affordability, regulatory, and availability. A high degree of interconnection between all the stakeholders emerges as a key element for the provision of intergenerational care. The most important technical challenges of IoT e-health require to optimize privacy, security, and user-friendliness of IoT e-health.

Design of an Interactive Nostalgic Amusement Device with User-Friendly Tangible Interfaces for Improving the Health of Older Adults

To help older adults achieve active aging, an interactive device with tangible interfaces is proposed, which combines human-machine interaction techniques and older adults' life experiences to provide three functions: nostalgia, leisure, and entertainment. Firstly, by a review of related theories and studies, principles for designing a desirable interactive device were established. Accordingly, a prototype device with an interactive game was constructed, which was then tested in a field experiment and improved according to the users' opinions collected by interviews. Subsequently, in a second experiment the users' and some experts' feedback about the system's usability and user interaction satisfaction was collected and analyzed, and found to be reliable and valid for further evaluations of the effectiveness of the proposed system, resulting in the following findings about the older adults who have played the game: the participants become more willing to use technological devices; involving them in the game creates positive aging effects; participants become more receptive to technology products; the participating older adults' cognitive abilities are trained and their body exercises increased, creating sensory stimulation and health promotion effects; and considering users with cognitive impairments who have stress and difficulty operating the device, the system needs to be improved in the future.

Design of a Massage-Inspired Haptic Device for Interpersonal Connection in Long-Distance Communication

The use of tactile senses in mediated communication has generated considerable research interest in past decades. Since massage is a common practice in Asian cultures, we propose to introduce massage-based interactions in mediated communication between people in a close relationship. We designed a device for distant interactive massage to be used during online conversation and we assessed its effect on interpersonal connection with eight pairs of Chinese participants in romantic relationships. All pairs were asked to engage in a conversation, either through a video call or through a massage-assisted video call. The findings showed that the use of the massage device significantly increased the perceived emotional and physical connection between the users. The results also showed a significant increase in the engagement in the massage activity, e.g., total massage time and average force per finger, from positive conversation to negative conversation, demonstrating an evidence of the interplay between audio-visual and haptic communication. Post hoc interviews showed the potential of the massage device for long-distance communication in romantic relationships as well as in parents-children relationships.