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A Social Companion and Conversational Partner for the Elderly

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Advanced Social Interaction with Agents

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering ((LNEE,volume 510))

Abstract

In this work, we present the development and evaluation of a social companion and conversational partner for the specific user group of elderly persons. With the aim of designing a user-adaptive system, we respond to the desires of the elderly which have been identified during various interviews and create a companion that talks and listens to the elderly users. Moreover, we have conducted a user study with a small group of retired seniors living at home or in a nursing home. The results show that our companion and its dialogue were perceived very positively and that a social companion and conversational partner is indeed in demand by lonely seniors.

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Acknowledgements

This work is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 645012.

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Correspondence to Juliana Miehle .

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Miehle, J., Bagci, I., Minker, W., Ultes, S. (2019). A Social Companion and Conversational Partner for the Elderly. In: Eskenazi, M., Devillers, L., Mariani, J. (eds) Advanced Social Interaction with Agents . Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 510. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92108-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92108-2_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92107-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92108-2

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