'About Japan' webinar series 207: EU-Japan Smart Ageing Project e-VITA

How can we establish a sustainable coaching system into the daily life of community-dwelling older adults in Europe and Japan which fosters well-being and active and healthy ageing in the local community?

This webinar will elucidate relevant aspects of putting robots into private homes of community-dwelling older adults in Europe and Japan. We will provide short presentations about the current work in the e-VITA project with different cultural aware robots and end-users.

What you will learn during this webinar?

Putting social robots into the private homes of community-dwelling older adults in Europe and Japan for a longer period of time (6 months) and how this huge challenge will be achieved by the two e-VITA consortia from Europe and Japan. Aspects to be covered:
 

• First, there is always the need fulfilment aspect, which needs personalization of contents and abilities of the robot to the preferences of the older adult users.
• Second, there are the intercultural issues in different countries, but also the long time frame plays an important role because the interactions should not become boring over time.
• Third, the natural language understanding might also be either a barrier or an enabler of the long-term use for older adults from different countries.
• Fourth, there are also ethical issues which needs to be taken into account, like the GDPR and APPI (GDPR equivalent in Japan).

In 2023, the e-VITA demonstrator will be put into 120 households in Europe and Japan, and the 6-month study design incl. a control group will examine different types of social and religious robots as well as other NLP devices (3D-hologram and simple speakers) in order to find the most suitable solution for robot-based active and healthy ageing support of community-dwelling older adults in Europe and Japan.

Programme:

• Introduction
• e-VITA presentation
• Q&A Session
• Conclusion

Registration deadline: 6 March 2023

Speakers: Rainer Wieching holds an MSc & PhD in Exercise Physiology. He works since 10 years as senior research scientist at USI. During the 15 years of his professional career before that time at USI, he has headed a health care SME, being responsible for technical, medical, and scientific aspects in global pharma marketing and medical education, focusing especially on prescription drugs (cardiovascular, oncology), evidence-based medicine (clinical trials, guidelines), and medical technology (ultrasound). 
He has successfully participated in IT/health related national research projects in Germany (BMBF, ICT support for People with Dementia, Care Robot Communication Projects, Future of Work in Care Robotics, and the Support Project for 8 German Robotic Projects). He was the S/T coordinator of the FP7 project iStoppFalls (an ICT-based system to predict and prevent falls) and the WP leader in the H2020 project my-AHA (my Active and Healthy Ageing). 
He also leads international robotic projects (care assistants and robotic companions) in several projects from Germany and Japan. This includes Academic Agreements with WASEDA and TOHOKU Universities, DAAD student exchange projects from Germany and Japan, as well as a German-Japanese Science Communication Project related to the Future of Work and Participatory Design in Care Robotics.
Currently he is leading the European-Japanese H2020 and MIC funded project e-VITA (EU-Japan Virtual coach for smart ageing) on the European side and is teaching at the University Participatory Design for Care Robotics and Innovation Management.

Toshimi Ogawa holds a diploma in Exercise physiology from Boston University and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Yamaguchi University and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Advanced Brain Science, the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer (IDAC) and in the Smart Aging Research Center (S.A.R.C.), a division of IDAC at Tohoku University. She would like to shed light on the importance and social value of the older adults and support the construction of a living environment in which they can decide for themselves how to live in old age and society will follow accordingly by utilizing information communication technology. In the field of human-computer interaction, she is researching the elements necessary for the symbiosis between robots and the older adults.
She is also currently coordinating the Horizon2020 e-VTA project in Japan side, which promotes collaborative research between Japan and the EU. In this project, she is particularly interested in exploring the possibilities of two-way communication between robots and the older adults in order to intrinsically motivate them to change their behavior toward a healthier lifestyle, as well as the issue of achieving sustainable robot coexistence in their lives.

Moderator: Sofia Smerzi, Business Support Coordinator, EU-Japan Centre
Organiser: EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation - Brussels Office

Deliverables

• PowerPoint presentation
• Recording