A social companion and conversation partner for elderly

Miehle, Juliana; Bagci, Ilker; Minker, Wolfgang; Ultes, Stefan

A social companion and conversation partner for elderly

Citation

Miehle J, Bagci I, Minker W, Ultes S. A social companion and conversation partner for elderly. In: Eskenazi M, Devillers L, Mariani J, editors. Advanced Social Interaction with Agents. 8th International Workshop On Spoken Dialogue Systems (IWSDS); 2017 June 6-9; Farmington, USA. Cham: Springer; 2018. [6] p. (LNEE; no. 510). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-92108-2_12

Abstract

In this work, we present the development and evaluation of a social companion and conversation partner for the special user group of elderly.With the aim of designing a user-adaptive system, we responded to the desires of the elderly which have been identified during various interviews and created a companion which talks and listens to the elderly users. Moreover, we conducted a user study with a small group of retired seniors living at home or in a nursing home. The results show that our companion and its dialogue were perceived very positively and that a social companion and conversation partner is indeed in demand by lonely seniors.