Keynote Lecture

Ambient Intelligence Environments for the Aging Population
Constantine Stephanidis
ICS-FORTH and University of Crete, Greece

Abstract: Over the past half century, the number of older persons worldwide has tripled - and will more than triple again over the next 50-year period, as the annual growth of the older population (1.9%) is significantly higher than that of the total population (1.02%). The European Commission has predicted that between 1995 and 2025 the UK alone will see a 44% rise in people over 60, while in the United States the baby-boomer generation, which consists of about 76 million people, is the largest group ever in the U.S., and is heading for retirement. This situation asks for new solutions towards improving the independence, the quality of life, and the active ageing of older citizens. Although substantial advances have been made in applying technology for the benefit of older persons, a lot of work remains to be done. Notably, only 13% of people aged over 65 are Internet users, while the average in Europe is 51%.

Recent advancements in Information Society Technologies research have tremendous potential for meeting the emerging needs of older people and for further improving their quality of life. In particular, the concept of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) provides a vision of the Information Society, where the emphasis is on greater user-friendliness, more efficient services support, user-empowerment, and support for human interactions. People are surrounded by intelligent intuitive interfaces that are embedded in all kinds of objects and an environment that is capable of recognizing and responding to the presence of different individuals in a seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible way.

AmI will have profound consequences on the type, content and functionality of the emerging products and services, as well as on the way people will interact with them, bringing about multiple new requirements for the development of the Information Society. The intelligence embedded in the environment allows to provide innovative environment-based services, which have the potential to complement, and in some cases to substitute, some human abilities. While a wide variety of different technologies is involved, the goal of AmI is to either hide the presence of technology from users, or to smoothly integrate it within the surrounding context as enhanced environment artefacts.

In the context outlined above, AmI technologies can enable older people to retain their independent living, and ultimately reduce health care expenditure. However, it is of paramount importance that such technologies and services are conceived and designed in a way which sustains their adoption by the aging population. Although older people are not generally considered to have disabilities, the natural ageing process carries some degenerative ability changes, which can include diminished vision, varying degrees of hearing loss, psychomotor impairments, as well as reduced attention, memory and learning abilities. All of these changes affect the way older people use interactive technologies, which must be accommodated to ensure that they are not disadvantaged. On the other hand, Ambient Intelligence environments are likely to pose different physical, perceptual and cognitive demands on humans compared to currently available technology.

It is therefore important to investigate how human functions, in particular with respect to aging, will be engaged in the emerging forms of interaction, and how this will affect physical interaction and an individual's perceptual and cognitive space (e.g., emotion, vigilance, information processing, memory). The main challenge in this respect is to identify and avoid forms of interaction which may lead to negative consequences such as confusion, cognitive overload, frustration, etc. This is particularly important given the pervasive impact of the new environment on all types of everyday activities and on the way of living. The notions of Universal Access and Design for All are central to this vision, since AmI aims at providing implicit, unobtrusive interaction by putting people and their social situations at the centre of design considerations.

Bio: Constantine Stephanidis, Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Crete, is the Director of the Institute of Computer Science. He is the Head of the Human - Computer Interaction Laboratory, and of the Centre for Universal Access and Assistive Technologies, and Head of the Ambient Intelligence Programme of ICS-FORTH. He is also the President of the Board of Directors of the Science and Technology Park of Crete. Over the past 25 years, he has been engaged as the Scientific Responsible in more than 50 European Commission and nationally funded projects and has published more than 350 scientific / technical papers. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer international journal "Universal Access in the Information Society", the Editor of the book "User Interfaces for All - concepts, methods and tools" (LEA 2001) and of "The Universal Access Handbook" (T &F 2009). Since 2001 he is the Founding Chair of the International Conference 'Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction' and since 2007 the General Chair of the HCI International Conference series.