This article reports a study aiming to determine the perceptions of older adults needing formal care about the usefulness, satisfaction, and ease of use of CaMeLi, a virtual companion based on an embodied conversational agent, and the perceptions of formal caregivers about the potential of virtual companions to support care provision. An observational study involving older adults needing formal care was conducted to assess CaMeLi using a multi-method approach (i.e., an auto-reported questionnaire—the Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of use questionnaire; a scale for the usability assessment based on the opinion of observers—the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health-based Usability Scale; and critical incident registration). Moreover, a focus group was conducted to collect data regarding the perceived utility of virtual companions to support care provision. The observational study was conducted with 46 participants with an average age of 63.6 years, and the results were associated with a high level of usefulness, satisfaction, and ease of use of CaMeLi. Furthermore, the focus group composed of four care providers considered virtual companions a promising solution to support care provision and to prevent loneliness and social isolation. The results of both the observational study and the focus group revealed good perceptions regarding the role of virtual companions to support the care provision for older adults.

The ability of robots to dialogue with humans appears as one critical Human-Machine Interaction feature when it comes to transferring robots into society. This ability gains additional importance when it comes to elderly people, since they find it more comfortable and natural to interact using voice, due to possible natural physical impairments that hinder the usage of some of the interaction modalities (e.g. touch screens). Challenges like recognition accuracy, distant speech, the idiosyncrasies of elderly voices (fading, muffled pronunciation, etc.), the effects of surrounding environment noise or the expressiveness of the robot when speaking, become highly relevant in the acceptance and usability of service robots by the ageing population. In this paper, we present the results, challenges and solutions developed during a nine-month iterative evaluation process that took place within the GrowMeUp project, with focus on speech recognition and synthesis. The paper concludes with an identification of open scientific and technological problems, based on our interpretation of results, which we identify as critical for the acceptance and usability of robots by an ageing society.

The European Commission (DG SANTE) launched a call for proposals in November 2017 on strategic initiatives for a Joint Statement in 2018. Ten proposals were voted until December 7th in the European Union Health Policy Platform[1]; the proposal under the theme Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE)[2] was the most voted and was confirmed by the European Commission in March 2018. In this context, since March 2018, Caritas Coimbra(1) and AFEdemy Ltd(2) are thus coordinating one of the three Thematic Networks for 2018, SHAFE, in close cooperation with main partners, such as the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EI-PAHA), the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC), the Reference Sites Collaborative Network, the European Covenant on Demographic Change, Eurocities, the European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL), the European Connected Health Alliance (ECHAlliance), the European Construction, Built Environment and Energy Efficient Building Technology Platform (ECTP) and the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research. SHAFE aims to facilitate the creation of healthy and friendly environments for all ages through the use of new technologies, towards the production of a comprehensive and participatory Joint Statement. This document was presented to the European Commission on 12 November 2018, with five main areas of recommendations to the EC, Member States and other local, regional and national organisations and is open for endorsement and implementation from this date onwards.