Project description
Smart support for a fit, ageing workforce
Europeans are getting older and working longer. Addressing the shrinking and ageing workforce is an important priority. It is necessary to support ageing workers to maintain their workability and strike a balance between professional and personal life. In this context, the EU-funded AgeingatWork project will develop a novel, ICT-based, personalised system to support ageing workers (aged 50+) by designing fit-for-purpose work environments and supporting flexible management of their needs. AgeingatWork will employ computation intelligence to assess user specificities and necessities, safety, ergonomics and other vital issues, and recommend best task assignments. Specially designed enhancement tools, like those for AR/VR-based context awareness and telepresence, and a novel Ambient Virtual Coach will help motivate a paradigm model of behaviour for well-being and productivity.
Objective
Ageing@Work will develop a novel ICT-based, personalized system to support ageing workers (aged 50+) into designing fit-for-purpose work environments and managing flexibly their evolving needs. Advanced dynamically adapted virtual models of workers will incorporate specificities in respect to skills, physical, cognitive and behavioral factors, being extended from the work context to personal life aspects interacting with workability, health and well-being. Virtual workplace models will encode characteristics of the workplace (factory, outdoor work site, home), at both physical and semantic, resource/process levels. On top of the models, computational intelligence will be responsible to (a) assess user specificities and needs i.r.t. work conditions, both in terms of ergonomics, health and safety issues and task assignments, and (b) perform personalized predictive simulations on workability, health and well-being. Recommendations will then be provided both to the worker and company (under strict privacy restrictions), on how the working conditions must adapt. The worker models will be populated by highly unobtrusive worker sensing, both at work, at home and on the move. To foster workability and productivity, highly personalized, intuitive, age-friendly productivity, co-design enhancement tools will be developed, including ones for AR/VR-based context-awareness and telepresence, lifelong learning and knowledge sharing. On top of these, a novel Ambient Virtual Coach (AVC) will encompass an empathic mirroring avatar for subtle notifications provision, an adaptive Visual Analytics –based personal dashboard, and a reward-based motivation system targeting positive and balanced worker behavior at work and personal life, towards a novel paradigm of ambient support into workability and well-being. The integrated system will be developed by user-centered design and will be evaluated at two pilot sites, related to core Industry 4.0 processes of mining and machines production.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
57001 Thermi Thessaloniki
Greece