Development of an Attentive System that Connects the Elderly and Their Families

Abstract

In Japan, 47% of all elderly people live alone or with their elderly spouse. We conducted a questionnaire and an interview and found they have some problems when they try to communicate with people outside of the household. There are two important factors to be considered for comfortable communication between elderly and their family. One is the content of communication, such as negotiation, consultation, simple communication, or chat. This factor includes the level of urgency. The other is the situation of the opponent; where and what they are doing and how busy they are. In this study, we mainly focus on the latter factor. Elderly people want to keep in touch with their families, but they are hesitant to make contact because they do not know the situation of their family. On the other hand, the family is also concerned about their elderly family members, but they may be too busy to receive contact and often feel guilty for they cannot respond. In this study, we try to give a solution using a smart speaker. We chose Amazon Alexa because it has a screen and a development environment. The function configuration of the first prototype is as follows: when elderly people want to contact their family, they talk to Alexa. Alexa checks the family’s schedule and judge availability referring to the Google calendar entered in advance and suggests the best contact method. After we tested the first prototype with a family, we made some improvement. The second prototype was accepted by another family and some usefulness was recognized.