A Carnegie Mellon project the SenseChair (pdf) addresses trying to empower elderly people in their own homes by giving them ways to communicate.

"The SenseChair supports communication, information, and mobility in the favorite spot in the home. It collects data using sensors, and expresses signals using light, sound, and vibration. It can remind, warn, or help the elder with a variety of tasks. It can provide a sense of the environment for people who are less mobile. It can also control appliances in the vicinity of the chair. The SenseChair has several personalities: it can act as a coach, a colleague, or an entertainer. It relies on the position and pose of the sitter for input, and provides multimodal output ranging from ambient to explicit notification."

via AIGA.

CATEGORY: AGEING