Personal and Private Ambient Intelligence for Senior Care

 

Project summary

The Hybrid Physical+Digital Spaces (HPDS) collaboration is developing an intelligent home sensing system to help older adults age in place and ease the strain on healthcare systems. As more older adults live independently, they will rely on personal health aides (PHAs) for daily tasks, increasing the demand for these caregivers. We aim to design ambient intelligence to support older adult care as well as provide upskilling of PHAs to improve their career opportunities and outcomes.

The system uses ambient sensors to monitor activities of daily living as well as how older adults interact with their built environment. The system aims to 1) infer older adult health and wellbeing and 2) employ AI-driven platforms to support older adult care and upskill PHAs.

The Billington Lab is contributing to two areas of this research in particular. First, through participatory design methods (e.g., surveys, focus groups, and collective speculation workshops), we are collaboratively exploring the perspectives of older adults and caregivers and uncovering ethical concerns and design opportunities for our ambient systems. Second, we are part of the team conducting field studies on multimodal sensing methodologies to understand the impact of daylight on older adult wellbeing as well as interactions of multimodal sensing and the built environment in diverse indoor settings.

Driving questions

  • What ethical implications do direct stakeholders see in using intelligent home sensing systems to support senior care?

  • How can the selection and strategic placement of sensors, considering the needs of stakeholders and ethical implications, optimize system performance and meet monitoring objectives effectively?

Publications

“Not Until It’s Absolutely Necessary”: Black Older Adults’ Perception of Supporting Medical Recovery with Voice Assistants. 
Green, A., Polite, G., Hung, I., Fessele, K., Billington, S.L., Landay, J.A., Cuadra, A. (2024) 27th ACM SIGCHI CSCW 2024, accepted

Project team

This project is a collaboration of faculty, post-docs, and students across Stanford including many members of the Hybrid Physical+Digital Spaces group. Researchers include:

  • Parker Ruth, PhD student, CS

  • Prof. Sarah Billington, CEE

  • Prof. James Landay, CS

  • Prof. Ehsan Adeli, Psychiatry

  • Prof. Andrea Cuadra, CS, Olin College

  • Dr. Yiwen Dong, post-doctoral scholar, HAI

  • Dr. Jane E, post-doctoral scholar, CS

  • Dr. Sneha Jain, post-doctoral scholar, CEE

  • Andrea Green, PhD student, CEE

  • Matt Joerke, PhD candidate, CS

  • Shardul Sapkota, PhD student, CS

 
 
Hybrid Spaces, OngoingSarah BillingtonHybrid Physical + Digital Spaces, HPDS, Andrea Green, Sneha Jain, Sarah Billington, HAI