SCC-IRG Track 1 Reducing Loneliness for Long Term Care Older Adults through Collaborative Augmented Reality

该项目旨在通过新的增强现实（AR）技术减少居住在长期护理（LTC）社区的老年人的孤独感。孤独症是一种严重的疾病，与心脏病、抑郁症、自杀、精神和身体衰退以及生活质量下降和死亡的增加有关。 在美国，五分之二的老年人报告说他们感到孤独。 更令人担忧的是，四分之三的LTC老年人经历过孤独。COVID-19大流行及其伴随的安全协议加剧了LTCs的孤独感。该项目将探索增强现实如何通过将他们与居住在其他地方的家庭成员联系起来来减少LTC老年人的孤独感。 这个项目将允许老年人和家庭成员看到彼此的三维现实图像，一起吃饭，并在各种活动中相互交流，如打牌。该项目的调查人员是工程学、计算机科学、老年学、护理学、医学和社会卫生科学方面的专家。 在AR技术的设计和测试中，该团队将与老年人和家庭成员合作，将AR与2D交互式通信技术进行比较，例如Zoom或Facetime。 对这种增强型AR技术在老年人、家庭和LTC工作人员中的可行性和可接受性的初步了解，将指导未来针对孤独感的研究，最终提高老年人的生活质量。该项目的社区焦点将是居住在田纳西州中部LTC社区的老年人，并有可能在全国范围内扩展该解决方案。该项目将从根本上推进协作增强现实的科学和技术方法，以增强社会存在感，从而增强社会联系，创造现实和社会适当的互动。在这项研究的过程中，它将在技术和社会科学方面做出几项基本贡献：1）创建一个新的基于多目标优化的框架，该框架最大限度地减少化身的手的位置误差，同时保留其相对于其所代表的人类的非语言行为;这种能力将允许共享活动（例如，一起喝茶）与适当的社会非语言行为（例如，凝视和姿势），通信的关键组成部分; 2）创建用户在其化身上的运动的新方法以生成尊重用户和其化身的环境之间的相异性的自然的、社会上适当的运动（例如，通过新颖的运动映射和优化，确保自然的行走模式; 3）更好地理解具有不同认知障碍水平的老年人及其家庭成员使用不同协作AR活动和环境的可行性、可接受性和社会存在; 4）根据认知障碍的水平，更好地理解协作AR对孤独的影响; 5）更深入地了解该技术在LTC和家庭住宅中的物流和部署，以了解可扩展性; 6）制定活动设计指南，以减少老年人的孤独感。研究将通过参与式设计进行，利用关键利益攸关方（例如，老年人，活动总监，LTC管理），并使用双臂实验设计进行评估，将协作AR与当前最先进的2D交互通信技术进行比较。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project seeks to reduce loneliness in older adults who reside in long term care (LTC) communities through new augmented reality (AR) technology. Loneliness is a serious condition that is related to increases in heart disease, depression, suicide, mental and physical decline, and reduced quality of life and death. Two out of five older adults in the U.S. report being lonely. Even more alarming, three out of four LTC older adults experience loneliness. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its accompanying safety protocols, has intensified loneliness across the LTCs. The project will discover how augmented reality can reduce loneliness in LTC older adults by linking them with family members who reside elsewhere. This project will allow older adults and family members to see each other’s 3-dimensional realistic images, eat meals together, and interact with one another in various activities, such as playing cards. Investigators of this project are experts in engineering, computer science, gerontology, nursing, medicine and social health science. Working with older adults and family members in the design and testing of the AR technology, the team will compare AR to 2D interactive communication technologies, such as Zoom or Facetime. Initial understanding of the feasibility and acceptability of this enhanced AR technology among older adults, families and LTC staff will guide future studies targeting loneliness, ultimately improving quality of life for older adults. The community focus for this project will be older adults residing in LTC communities in Middle Tennessee with the potential to scaling the solution across the nation.The project will fundamentally advance the scientific and the technological methodologies of collaborative Augmented Reality to enhance social presence and thus social connectedness, to create realistic and socially appropriate interactions. It will make several fundamental contributions in both technology and social science during the course of this research: 1) create a novel multi-objective optimization based framework that minimizes positional errors of the hand of the avatar while preserving its nonverbal behavior with respect to the human it represents; such an ability will allow shared activities (e.g., drinking tea together) with appropriate social nonverbal behavior (e.g., gaze and postures), a critical component of communication; 2) create a new methodology of a user’s motions onto its avatar to generate naturalistic, socially appropriate motion that respects dissimilarities between the user’s and its avatar’s environments (e.g., differences in room geometries) through novel motion mapping and optimization that ensures natural walking patterns; 3) develop a greater understanding of the feasibility, acceptability and social presence in the use of varying collaborative AR activities and environments for older adults with different levels of cognitive impairment and their family members; 4) develop a greater understanding of the impact of collaborative AR on loneliness based on level of cognitive impairment; 5) gain a greater understanding of the logistics and deployment of this technology in LTCs and family homes to inform scalability; and 6) create activity design guidelines for reduction of loneliness in older adults. The research will be conducted through participatory design using key stakeholders (e.g., older adults, activity directors, LTC management) and evaluated using a two-arm experimental design comparing collaborative AR to current state-of-the-art 2D interactive communication technologies.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.