AI in Eldercare: New Solutions to Old Problems

AAAI Fall 2008 Symposium, November 7-9, Washington, DC

Presentation Schedule

Links from the Symposium:

· Beth Logan’s paper: A Long-Term Evaluation of Sensing Modalities for Activity Recognition from Ubicomp 2007 and slides.

· Get the dataset from the MIT PlaceLab.

· Quality of life grand challenge dataset

· University of Rochester dataset

· For more info on the ICAPS 2010 Recognition Challenge, email Henry Kautz.

If you want to add more links, email Marge Skubic

Symposium Announcement

There is a wide range of problems facing older adults as they age. Many of these problems represent old challenges to health care providers, including chronic illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension, as well as deterioration of physical function, high risk of falling, stroke-induced incapacitation, memory problems, cognitive decline, and loneliness. At the same time, the population of older adults is growing dramatically, giving concern as to how these people will get the care they need.

AI technology offers the potential for innovative solutions and indeed, the research community has been active in proposing solutions to these challenges, spanning such areas as sensing and sensory perception, computer vision, planning, reasoning, smart homes, robotics and human-robot interaction. This is an AI application area that has the potential to make a significant impact on the lives of many people, and there is widespread interest from many directions. A successful symposium was held 3 years ago on the topic; in 2008, we build on the 2005 symposium and invite an interdisciplinary group with joint interests in addressing aging-related challenges. In addition to AI researchers, gerontologists, geriatric nurses and psychiatrists, rehabilitation therapists, social workers, counselors, epidemiologists, and those from other related professions and disciplines are invited to attend.

The time is right to again bring together the AI researchers tackling aging-related problems and gerontology experts who can offer an understanding of the problems. This connection with gerontology experts will help the AI researchers make sure the proposed solutions solve the right problems, while at the same time will offer new ideas to gerontology experts as to the possibilities at hand. The symposium will provide a forum to share ideas, foster new collaborations, and investigate funding opportunities.

The symposium will focus on a variety of topics that address the physical, cognitive, and emotional challenges of aging, including those listed below:

• Smart homes
• Reminder systems
• Fall detection
• Automatic gait analysis
• Passive sensing for monitoring physical and/or cognitive condition
• Wearable sensors
• Aging assessment tools
• Robotics for eldercare
• Stroke rehabilitation
• Systems to provide emotional support
• Aging assistance for people with disabilities
• Ethical considerations of eldercare systems
• Evaluating eldercare systems

Format

The symposium will consist of a combination of presentation and discussion styles and will provide a mixture of research at various stages, from the more established to new emerging work. The following types of presentations and discussion are planned:

• At least two focused panel discussions including one offering the perspective of gerontology experts, where AI researchers are invited to pose technology solutions for discussion
• Talks describing established work (about 30 minutes each) followed by discussion periods
• Short talks describing emerging work (about 10-15 minutes each) followed by discussion periods
• A discussion of funding opportunities with representatives from funding agencies
• Breakout sessions with small groups discussing challenges and possible solutions
• Reports of the breakout sessions to the large group with time for interactive discussion of the results

Submissions

Submit long papers (up to 8 pages) and short pages (up to 3 pages) to Marge Skubic at skubicm@missouri.edu.

Deadline: May 29, 2008

Links to Author Instructions and the Permission to Distribute Form, which will be required for final papers. A copyright form is NOT required for symposium papers.

Organizing Committee

Michael Anderson, University of Hartford, USA	anderson@hartford.edu
Susan Anderson, University of Connecticut, USA	Susan.Anderson@uconn.edu
Tim Bickmore, Northeastern University, USA	bickmore@ccs.neu.edu
Cynthia Breazeal, MIT, USA	cynthiab@media.mit.edu
Jesse Hoey, University of Dundee, Scotland	jessehoey@computing.dundee.ac.uk
Stephen Intille, MIT, USA	intille@mit.edu
Ben Krose, Univ. of Amsterdam, Netherlands	krose@science.uva.nl
Alex Mihailidis, University of Toronto, Canada	alex.mihailidis@utoronto.ca
Federico Pecora, Orebro University, Sweden	fpa@aass.oru.se
Rich Simpson, University of Pittsburgh, USA	ris20@pitt.edu
Marge Skubic (chair), University of Missouri, USA	skubicm@missouri.edu
Holly Yanco, Univ. of Massachusetts Lowell, USA	holly@cs.uml.edu
Howard Wactlar, Carnegie Mellon University, USA	wactlar@cmu.edu