Periodic Reporting for period 1 - VR2Care (3D Community Aware Virtual Spaces as Smart Living Environments for Physical Activity and Rehabilitation)
Período documentado: 2022-01-01 hasta 2022-12-31
VR2Care breaks the current VR paradigm in smart living environments by enabling a multi-user mixed reality service, available for embodied exercising group in different physical locations at the same time and with expert exercise supervision. Motivation is empowered in VR2Care by a social commitment. A social experience of several people sharing difficulties and fighting isolation, replaces the “the patient/user and the application” paradigm, and the gamified entertainment experiences.
VR2Care aims to create age-friendly virtual environments fostering the use of interactive technologies for the promotion of physical activity and social interaction. The practice of physical activity and training are performed in a realistic multi-user virtual reality environment, where users are represented with real human forms, and with animations synchronised with natural movements (embodiment) and multimodal interactions combining voice, gestures and body movement. The environment also provides monitoring and guidance of physical activity by smart virtual assistant that combine artificial intelligence with direct human manipulation, according to the needs of each intervention allowing a multiple set of activities, from functional training to rehabilitation. The VR2Care platform is a unique environment for physical activity, training and rehabilitation which provides intelligent interfaces in a multiuser environment. It combines virtual reality technologies for supervised exercise with natural interaction techniques, by enhancing socialisation with the practice of physical activity.
The three major objectives of VR2Care project are:
1. To integrate technological, clinical, and social perspectives of using interactive technologies, ensuring that the VR2Care platform is innovative while also extending our scientific understanding and practice- based experiments of engaging the community for active and healthy ageing with physical activity and exercise.
2. To develop, implement and validate the VR2Care platform that leverages cutting-edge approaches including a multi-user virtual reality environment, natural interaction, pervasive monitoring of physical activity and smart virtual assistants, to produce a platform that is usable, adaptable, extendable and sustainable.
3. To explore and measure the level of engagement, effectiveness, and impact that the VR2Care platform has on older adults in the areas of physical activity and social interaction, validating this through small scale pilots involving a community of stakeholders in Europe, and providing an exploitation and business plan for the platform adoption.
VR2Care goes beyond the common requirements as it is codesigned with active participation of older adults, caregivers, therapists, community and clinicians to provide a full immersive multiuser experience. VR2Care will leverage the technology by running four demonstrators that support the project pilots in three locations across the EU: Portugal, Netherlands and Italy. Demonstrators explore the multiuser capabilities of the environment in a distance psychomotricity training with large movements; multimodal natural interaction; an hybrid approach with a local group of older adults and a distance individuals performing physical activities; and a clinical approach for the promotion of exercise as a therapy after rehabilitation. From a business perspective, VR2Care opens up a global market to deliver services and products to customers, where distances between provider and customer disappear. Business opportunities go beyond the technological and technical companies, expanding challenges for the AAL ecosystem including companies such as broadcasters, architects, therapists, training and education institutions to deliver at any place trainings, advices and design.
VR2Care aims to create age-friendly virtual environments fostering the use of interactive technologies for the promotion of physical activity and social interaction. The practice of physical activity and training are performed in a realistic multi-user virtual reality environment, where users are represented with real human forms, and with animations synchronised with natural movements (embodiment) and multimodal interactions combining voice, gestures and body movement. The environment also provides monitoring and guidance of physical activity by smart virtual assistant that combine artificial intelligence with direct human manipulation, according to the needs of each intervention allowing a multiple set of activities, from functional training to rehabilitation. The VR2Care platform is a unique environment for physical activity, training and rehabilitation which provides intelligent interfaces in a multiuser environment. It combines virtual reality technologies for supervised exercise with natural interaction techniques, by enhancing socialisation with the practice of physical activity.
The three major objectives of VR2Care project are:
1. To integrate technological, clinical, and social perspectives of using interactive technologies, ensuring that the VR2Care platform is innovative while also extending our scientific understanding and practice- based experiments of engaging the community for active and healthy ageing with physical activity and exercise.
2. To develop, implement and validate the VR2Care platform that leverages cutting-edge approaches including a multi-user virtual reality environment, natural interaction, pervasive monitoring of physical activity and smart virtual assistants, to produce a platform that is usable, adaptable, extendable and sustainable.
3. To explore and measure the level of engagement, effectiveness, and impact that the VR2Care platform has on older adults in the areas of physical activity and social interaction, validating this through small scale pilots involving a community of stakeholders in Europe, and providing an exploitation and business plan for the platform adoption.
VR2Care goes beyond the common requirements as it is codesigned with active participation of older adults, caregivers, therapists, community and clinicians to provide a full immersive multiuser experience. VR2Care will leverage the technology by running four demonstrators that support the project pilots in three locations across the EU: Portugal, Netherlands and Italy. Demonstrators explore the multiuser capabilities of the environment in a distance psychomotricity training with large movements; multimodal natural interaction; an hybrid approach with a local group of older adults and a distance individuals performing physical activities; and a clinical approach for the promotion of exercise as a therapy after rehabilitation. From a business perspective, VR2Care opens up a global market to deliver services and products to customers, where distances between provider and customer disappear. Business opportunities go beyond the technological and technical companies, expanding challenges for the AAL ecosystem including companies such as broadcasters, architects, therapists, training and education institutions to deliver at any place trainings, advices and design.
The VR2Care consortium under WP2 have collected knowledge and experience from primary and secondary users, conducting focus groups in the four pilot sites. The results of this work, the requirements from primary and secondary users’ perspectives have been reported in D2.1 and D2.2.
VR2Care requirements were the key to design the system architecture under WP3, to create [..] a realistic multi-user virtual reality environment, where users are represented with real human forms, and with animations synchronised with natural movements (embodiment) and multimodal interactions combining voice, gestures and body movement. The proposed system directly addresses ICT-55-2020 challenge of “developing richer virtual environments, new user interfaces and improved immersion maximizing the feeling of presence”. Combining the requirements and the existing solutions, the VR2Care architecture is a system of systems that preserves the individual products of the technological partners and provides an integration layer for the VR2Care digital ecosystem. D3.4 and D3.6 provide a full perspective of the architecture and its “systems”: REHABILITY, SmartAL, cogvis.ai and the multiuser environment. Each of these systems is being tested by pilot sites under the iterative testing task of WP2. Moreover, professionals are being trained to use the system and be prepare for the pilots. Under WP4 pilot sited have been characterized (D4.1) and the study protocol (D4.3) have been prepared for running the pilots.
The exploitation activities carried out under WP5, include the identification of current similar projects, under an emerging market empowered by the fast grow of the metaverse. A desk research have been carried out and reported in D5.1.
VR2Care project kick-off meeting in January 2022 was prepared to join at INESC TEC, Portugal the partners for two full days of in-person meetings. However, the fourth wave of COVID-19 pandemic did not allow a in-person meeting at that time and the kick-off was held online. The in-person kick-off meeting took place in April 2022, and a second general assembly of the consortium was hosted by TanteLouise in the Netherlands. The advisory board was created in July 2022, with the invitation of experts on the domains of Social Virtual Reality and Active and Healthy Ageing.
Dissemination and communication WP6 deploy the project web site and the project branding (D6.2) after establishing the strategy in the dissemination and communication plan (D6.1). The project have been disseminated in the most impactful events on the topics of Virtual Reality and Active and Healthy Ageing.
VR2Care requirements were the key to design the system architecture under WP3, to create [..] a realistic multi-user virtual reality environment, where users are represented with real human forms, and with animations synchronised with natural movements (embodiment) and multimodal interactions combining voice, gestures and body movement. The proposed system directly addresses ICT-55-2020 challenge of “developing richer virtual environments, new user interfaces and improved immersion maximizing the feeling of presence”. Combining the requirements and the existing solutions, the VR2Care architecture is a system of systems that preserves the individual products of the technological partners and provides an integration layer for the VR2Care digital ecosystem. D3.4 and D3.6 provide a full perspective of the architecture and its “systems”: REHABILITY, SmartAL, cogvis.ai and the multiuser environment. Each of these systems is being tested by pilot sites under the iterative testing task of WP2. Moreover, professionals are being trained to use the system and be prepare for the pilots. Under WP4 pilot sited have been characterized (D4.1) and the study protocol (D4.3) have been prepared for running the pilots.
The exploitation activities carried out under WP5, include the identification of current similar projects, under an emerging market empowered by the fast grow of the metaverse. A desk research have been carried out and reported in D5.1.
VR2Care project kick-off meeting in January 2022 was prepared to join at INESC TEC, Portugal the partners for two full days of in-person meetings. However, the fourth wave of COVID-19 pandemic did not allow a in-person meeting at that time and the kick-off was held online. The in-person kick-off meeting took place in April 2022, and a second general assembly of the consortium was hosted by TanteLouise in the Netherlands. The advisory board was created in July 2022, with the invitation of experts on the domains of Social Virtual Reality and Active and Healthy Ageing.
Dissemination and communication WP6 deploy the project web site and the project branding (D6.2) after establishing the strategy in the dissemination and communication plan (D6.1). The project have been disseminated in the most impactful events on the topics of Virtual Reality and Active and Healthy Ageing.
The desk research carried out under WP5 revealed that there are still no commercial solutions for the community practice of physical exercise and rehabilitation in an immersive environment. Currently, the VR2Care digital ecosystem is being iterative tested in several phases under WP2, introducing the different technologies provided by the system. The multi-user environment will be tested as an integrated solution in last phase of the iterative testing, followed by the pilots, expected to start in M16 in order to evaluate the technology adoption strategy, the user satisfaction, the impact in the quality of life and the improvement in the practice of physical activity.
Exploitation and VR2Care business plan will be prepared under WP5. Moreover, the project will be disseminated in the forums with high impact in the domains of Interactive Technologies and Active and Healthy Ageing.
Exploitation and VR2Care business plan will be prepared under WP5. Moreover, the project will be disseminated in the forums with high impact in the domains of Interactive Technologies and Active and Healthy Ageing.