NCT05835856

e-VITA: European-Japanese Virtual Coach for Smart Ageing (WAVE II)

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 240 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Istituto Nazionale di Ricovero e Cura per Anziani · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The study is a multicentre Proof-of-Concept. The general objective of the e-VITA project is to develop a personalized virtual coach capable of interacting with its elderly interlocutor. The experimentation will be carried out in 4 sites: Italy, France, Germany and Japan.

Detailed description

The general objective of the e-VITA project is to improve well-being for older adults and thereby promote active and healthy ageing, contribute to independent living, and reduce risks of social exclusion of older adults by making use a virtual coach by 240 healthy older adults recruited from Europe (France, Germany and Italy) and Japan. The study is a multicenter Proof-of-Concept study with a duration of the intervention of six months. The multidisciplinary consortium collaborating in this project will develop an innovative ICT-based virtual coaching system to detect subtle changes in physical, cognitive, psychological and social domains of older adult's daily life. The e-VITA virtual coach will thus provide personalized recommendations and interventions, for sustainable wellbeing in a smart living environment at home. The different components of the system are: * Coaches, consisting of social robots, that will interact with the users and are guided by apps; * Sensors (both wearable and domestic) to detect physiological parameters, physical activities, and behavior of the users; these sensors are: the Huawei smart band (wearable), the NeU device (wearable), and the DeltaDore system (domestic). * Smartphones (the chatbot to provide insights, suggestion, and stimulation about healthy nutrition and physical exercise; the social platform to encourage users to share their interests). These components (coaches, sensors, chatbot and social platform) together with a main software named Use Cases Configurator (UCC) constitute the Virtual Coach.

Conditions

• Older Adults
• Quality of Life

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Virtual coach with NAO robot	The coaching device used is the softbank NAO 5 and NAO 6 humanoid interactive mobile robot. These robot platform allows multimodal natural language interaction and robot autonomous movement.
DEVICE	Virtual coach with Google Nest Hub (2e generation) group	The coaching device used is Google Nest Hub (2e generation). This is a connected speaker enriched with a 7-chip touch screen. It has a loudspeaker and 3 microphones, making interaction possible.
DEVICE	Virtual coach with Gatebox device	The coaching device used is the Gatebox, a hologram like device which the user can interact. There are internal sensors such as a camera and a microphone allow the user to converse with the projected character. It connects to the Internet via a wireless LAN. With infrared rays and Bluetooth, it can also be connected to household appliances and other devices.
DEVICE	virtual coach with CelesTE robot	The coaching device used is the CelesTE robot, a prayer companion designed for Christian Catholic users.The intended main function of CelesTE is to be a "guardian angel", especially thought for elderly people. It can be a prayer companion, and contains a vast number of teachings, including the whole Bible. Its AI is capable of keeping a short conversation, in which the user may ask and receive an answer about a sensitive topic (such as happiness, death, faith, etc.). It can also printout a selection of contents. The coaching device CelesTE will be substituted by DarumaTO for the Japanese centers.
OTHER	booklet	Participant in the control group will receive a booklet containing information and activities on well-being

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-07-24
• Primary completion: 2024-03-30
• Completion: 2024-03-30
• First posted: 2023-04-28
• Last updated: 2023-10-27

Locations

4 sites across 4 countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan