Background: The paper presents the work carried out within NINFA (iNtelligent Integrated Network For Aged people), a project for the wellbeing of the elderly people at home.
Aims: The impact of new technologies on elderly people is evaluated with respect to the three main topics faced by NINFA.
Methods: NINFA was structured into three main topics: (1) active user engagement from the very beginning of the planning stage: the use of specially designed questionnaires to evaluate the acceptability of new technology in general and robot caregiver specifically; (2) assessment of the well-being through non-invasive techniques: natural language processing for language change monitoring in elderly subjects; (3) automated assessment of motor and cognitive functions at home: systems to deliver tests and exergames through user interfaces compliant with elderly subjects.
Results: The analysis shows that there is no a priori closure to support the technology, but it must not be invasive and must allow social interactions. The study of speech transcripts shows that a large variations in the number of words used to describe the same situation could be a sign on the onset of cognitive impairments. The specifically designed systems highlight, after the training period, significant improvements in the performances of the participants and a satisfaction with regards to the systems usability.
Conclusions: The outcomes of NINFA project highlight some important aspects of the relationship between elderly people and new technologies concerning: engagement and acceptability, assessment of the wellbeing and of the modifications of motor, cognitive and language functions.
Keywords: Exergames; Linguistic and cognitive analysis; Movement analysis; Postural stability; User engagement; Wellbeing assessment; “At-home” monitoring.