Ageing and Avatars
Project overview:
In today’s ageing society, innovation that promotes the social participation of older adults is vitally important. It is well known that older people who have access to meaningful social networks and who actively participate in community or group activities benefit from enhanced wellbeing that enables them to live a full and active life for longer. However, as people approach advanced old age their opportunities to engage in these activities often diminish. Increasing frailty and deteriorating health can impair mobility, keeping people confined to their homes.
This project will investigate how full-bodied gesture-based interactions and avatars can be used to create a sense of virtual presence between older people who are unable to meet together face-to-face.
Using cutting edge virtual and augmented reality technologies (VR/AR), the research team will analyse how older people represent themselves using virtual avatars in social virtual environments.
The project builds on previous research including the Growing Old and Staying Connected project that examined the role of technology in improving older people’s experience of social isolation.
This project aims to identify how natural user interface (NUI) technologies can be designed and used to facilitate active social participation for older people constrained by limited mobility.
Project team
Steven Baker, Zaher Joukhadar, Romina Carrasco, Joanna Lee, Mesut Latifolgu, Jingcheng Wang, and Martin Reinoso
Technologies:
My role in the project:
I led software development efforts in this project