Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Augmentation Systems and Intelligent Support Technologies for Aging (ASISTa-ERC)

工程研究中心规划拨款竞赛是ERC项目的试点征集。规划补助金不需要作为ERC竞赛的一部分，但它旨在在团队之间建立能力，以规划聚合的、中心规模的工程研究。这项计划拨款的目的是进一步发展拟议的ASISTa-ERC的目标和组织。ASISTa-ERC将探索利用技术来改善日益增长的老年人及其照顾者的生活。为此，它将利用人工智能、机器人技术、人机交互、移动传感和计算等方面的先进技术，创造智能环境，增强认知能力，支持身体活动，并扩大对老年人、他们的支持网络和照顾者的社会和情感支持。这些环境将被设计成随时间跟踪个人，并适应他们日常生活的变化和不断变化的医疗保健需求。通过加强和支持不断增长的老年人及其照顾者，ASISTa-ERC的工作将为老年人及其家庭创造显著的经济和社会效益。它还将创建一个新的平台，以支持致力于照顾老年人的快速增长的劳动力，并为新的商业创新建立一个统一的框架。规划活动将通过一系列三次会议来完善ASISTa-ERC的研究、劳动力发展、包容文化和创新项目。这些会议将探讨三个交叉主题：身体支持、认知支持和社会支持。他们将开发一种策略，以创建具有三个关键属性的系统来处理这些机会：智能、交互性和个性化（I3）。智能系统采用可以分类和预测活动模式的模型，并以最能提高个人生活质量的方式对这些模式做出反应。交互式系统利用先进的传感和人机交互，以适当的方式进行观察、参与和响应。个性化系统将认知、社会和物理支持结合到每个独特的生活环境中，并随着个人年龄和生活环境的变化而发展这种混合支持。所有的开发工作都将以用户为中心和用户知情，以增加目标人群的接受和采用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.The objective of this planning grant is to further develop the goals and organization of the proposed ASISTa-ERC. The ASISTa-ERC will explore the use of technology to enhance the lives of the growing population of older adults and their caregivers. To do so, it will leverage advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer interaction, and mobile sensing and computing to create intelligent environments that augment cognitive ability, support physical activities, and amplify social and emotional support for aging individuals, their support network, and their caregivers. These environments will be designed to track individuals over time and adapt to changes in their daily life and their evolving healthcare needs. By enhancing and supporting the growing population of older adults and their caregivers, the work of the ASISTa-ERC will create significant economic and social benefits for older adults and their families. It will also create a new platform to support a rapidly growing workforce devoted to care for aging adults, and a unified framework for new commercial innovations.The planning activities will refine the research, workforce development, culture of inclusion, and innovation programs of the ASISTa-ERC through a series of three meetings. These meetings will explore three cross-cutting themes: physical support, cognitive support, and social support. They will develop a strategy for creating systems addressing these opportunities that have three key properties: intelligence, interactivity, and individualization (I3). Intelligent systems employ models that can classify and anticipate patterns of activity, and respond to those patterns in ways that most enhance the quality of life of the individual. Interactive systems exploit advanced sensing and human-computer interaction to observe, engage and respond in an appropriate manner. Individualized systems adapt the blend of cognitive, social, and physical support to each unique life situation, and evolve that blend of support as the individual ages and life circumstances change. All development efforts will be user-centered and user-informed to increase acceptance and adoption by the target populations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.