Sonopa kick-off meeting minutes

Ghent University, Belgium

2nd-3rd May 2013

 

 

Partner

Short

Participants

1

Docobo

DO

Richard Plumbridge (RPl), Stephen Hope (SH)

2

U Twente

UT

Somaya Ben Allouch (SB)

3

Smart Signs

SmS

Maria Lijding (ML)

4

U Deusto

UD

Federico Castanedo (FC), Bernhard Klein (BK)

5

SpringTechno

ST

Claus-Peter Ketner (CK)

6

Abotic

AB

Philip Olbrich (PO), Robert Prugnaller (RP)

7

E-Seniors

ES

Monique Epstein (ME), Mona Komulainen (MK), Daria Kyslitska (DK)

8

Camera-Contact

CCC

Serge Smidtas (SS)

9

iMinds

iM

Wilfried Philips (WP), Hamid Aghajan (HA), Francis Deboeverie (FD)

10

CM

CM

Sofie Verhaeghe (SV), Wim Henkens (WH)

Everyone arrived on time and following introductions an overview presentation of the whole project was given by FC & BK

Project Overview

There are two aspects to the project:

·         Smart home scenario

·         Elderly social network

The objectives of the project are:

·         To help elderly people improve their living standards by employing the aspects above.

·         To encourage elderly people to interact.

Technical Configuration:

·         House to house networking

·         Functional components

Recommendation Module:

·         When do we recommend activities to users? i.e. we don’t want to annoy them.

·         By assessing their activity level over time and intervening when the activity level drops.

·         How do we develop the algorithms to achieve this?

·         We need to deploy some sensors (which ones?) to collect the data to help develop the algorithms.

Smart homes:

·         Need sensors to monitor certain appliances, there are many to choose from

·         The use of different kinds of sensors will have a direct impact on the ethical issues that we need to take in consideration from the very begging of the project

·         Need a wireless network to collect and analyse the information

(See smart home survey slide from presentation)

Creation of an Elderly Social Network; Possible Scenarios:

·         In the living room – to interact with another elderly person to play a game for example.

·         Or in the kitchen, instructions to cook and at the same time share with others.

 

In summary:

·         Meet new people with the same interests

·         Get recommendations for activities

·         Do an activity together

·         Extend your activities outside

Create a virtual community network. Survey supports the notion that local friendships are the most popular.

See functional concept slide from presentation:

Raw data is sent to the Intelligent Behaviour Analysis (IBA) module, and then to the sensor network infrastructure (SN Infa),  the output is used to create the User Behaviour Model (UBM) this leads to the recommendation model (Recomm)

Discussion:

We could use the open source social network software called….?

Would be more valuable if health monitoring was included? But this call was for social networking so we have to be careful how we focus this, so the health benefit could be promoted as an additional benefit, but there are IG issues here if we start looking at health data, but we could include reminders to take medicine for example.

Need to demonstrate the triple win scenario as defined by the reviewers

·         What seniors wish to know about their fellows’ activities?

·         With whom the seniors wish to share their experiences ?:

a)      Caregivers, families and friend

b)      With new friends

·         We need to agree on a standard on information sharing

·         The end-user will need to give his/her consent of the usage > Ethical Issues

WP3 Presentation

WP3 Objectives slide: Maybe expand the social network infrastructure to include the health stuff?

Plan – behaviour analysis could be brought forward

Need to define the effort for each partner for each task in WP3

For user requirements we need to give potential users hands on experience of the technology to get good feedback.

SN infrastructure and UI: important to use a wall mounted screen to keep clutter and hands free.

Dev Smart Home Modules: Cameras are problematical, people don’t like them, but OK for video conferencing or ones you can switch off or very low resolution images. Also giving the user more control, to delete images for example. Or use cameras for the social aspects but not the monitoring of users behaviour.

Need to think about cameras or motion sensors (low resolution) and the use of PIR. Data needs to be protected and cameras can be used as motion sensors normally but then used as a camera in a fall situation for example.

Also need to consider the impact of installation of equipment on the user, we don’t want to upset them before we start!

Decisions:

Decision on task efforts?

Questions on scenario & architecture?

Availability of raw sensor data?  - There are existing data sets that can be used to kick start the data analysis e.g. Newcastle University, but we need to generate our own data too.

How to delegate tasks for behaviour analysis between ST, IBBT & UD?

How to coordinate smart home appliance development between AB, SmS &  CCC?

Questions:

How are we going to allocate work for partners in each work package?

How are we going to re shuffle the allocated time?

Partner presentations

ESeniors

What kind of user we are targeting?

How many people?

We need fliers to give potential users and informal carers, from the very begging of the project

We need to dispose a detailed SONOPA system description that is easy to understand in order to ensure the end-users’ understanding

We need to adapt the proposal so that it is state of the art

UTwente

Coordination is crucial in WP2 because there are 3 countries involved and it is a critical activity in defining the user requirements.

CM

Important action points regarding the end-user involvement in the end of the ppt presentation

iMinds

abotic

SmartSigns

Camera Contact

Customers are those providing care to users of the system

Spring Techno

Udeusto

Docobo

WP5 Issue

iMinds have volunteered to lead WP2 and Federico will ask abotic if they will lead WP5. Update: abotic have agreed to lead WP5.

 

User Requirements Workshop

Who are the users? The proposal states: Users living alone with a care giver living nearby. Physically healthy would be preferable.

What equipment are we going to use?

What about using two types of users, one who are active, and one for wheelchair users?

How much will the equipment cost?

We can conduct the trials in serial to use less hardware, especially for the more expensive components, but leave other sensors in place for a greater number of users.

Pilot one is to collect data, pilot two is to assess users use of the system.

The scenario in the proposal specifies rural and urban users, how will that work, can we do both?

Need to ensure the infrastructure is sufficient to handle the data needs i.e. sending videos of the results of cooking.

Typical  activity of an elderly person.

Gets up, check email, shop for food, doctor appointment, couple of phone calls, lunch, make bed, arrange meeting, go to the museum, take a nap, more shopping.

Develop a user questionnaire to make suggestions about how their daily life could be improved through the technology we have available, such as useful local info about clubs or bus times etc.

Actions

Somaya will develop the semi-structured end-user interview (not a straight questionnaire) to be used in each of the 3 pilot areas. This interview will be conducted in four countries in England, France, Belgium and Netherlands. Each country will involve about three end-users.

Next meeting; Bilbao probably during the week beginning 14th October, actual dates to be confirmed by Federico. If Federico is not able to host the meeting in Bilbao, E-Seniors will offer to organise the meeting in Paris.

WP leaders to arrange monthly skype calls as appropriate, and record minutes