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ViTA: Virtual Trainer for Aging

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Ambient Assisted Living (ForItAAL 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering ((LNEE,volume 540))

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Abstract

ViTA (Virtual Training for Aging) is an experimental system that aims to strengthen the memory of the people who suffer the first symptoms of dementia and feel the risk of losing their ability to recall significant events in their lives due to the progression of the disease. ViTA exploits concepts of the reminiscence and behavioral therapies to improve cognitive, emotional and social functioning by supporting patients with dementia. Caregivers interact with ViTA to collect fragments of memory and organize them into a knowledge map in which each fragment is linked to the other through emotionally significant stories. A conversational interface allows the navigation of the knowledge map referring to each patient. Thanks to the Artificial Intelligence algorithms implemented in ViTA, patients can access the system to review their memories and stories, leveraging on a conversational interface based on speech and textual interaction modalities in addition to a more traditional interactive interface. ViTA will be tested and verified over the next months by a group of elderly people with early dementia symptoms at the Geriatrics Department and Long Term Care facilities of the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza Research Hospital and it is implemented on top of the IBM Watson platform integrated with software tools derived by previous research experiences.

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Acknowledgements

The research described in this article has been developed thanks to the collaboration between the IBM Italia Foundation and the IRCCS Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza Research Hospital within the IBM Impact Grants Program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research & Business Unit, IBM, Italy, Italy

    Pietro Leo, Silvia Peschiera, Angelo Failla & Fabrizio Renzi

  2. Geriatric Unit, Department of Medical Sciences, Fondazione Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy

    Grazia D’Onofrio, Daniele Sancarlo & Antonio Greco

  3. The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pontedera, Pisa, Italy

    Grazia D’Onofrio

  4. ICT, Innovation and Research Unit, Fondazione Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, San Giovanni Rotondo, Foggia, Italy

    Francesco Ricciardi, Michele De Petris, Francesco Giuliani & Giuseppe Ciarambino

Authors
  1. Pietro Leo
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  2. Grazia D’Onofrio
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  3. Daniele Sancarlo
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  4. Francesco Ricciardi
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  5. Michele De Petris
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  6. Francesco Giuliani
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  8. Silvia Peschiera
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  9. Angelo Failla
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Grazia D’Onofrio .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Niccolò Casiddu

  2. University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Claudia Porfirione

  3. Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy

    Andrea Monteriù

  4. The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pontedera, Pisa, Italy

    Filippo Cavallo

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Leo, P. et al. (2019). ViTA: Virtual Trainer for Aging. In: Casiddu, N., Porfirione, C., Monteriù, A., Cavallo, F. (eds) Ambient Assisted Living. ForItAAL 2017. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 540. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04672-9_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04672-9_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04671-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04672-9

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