A Smart Speaker System for Cognitively-Impaired Elders
Grant Data
Project Title
A Smart Speaker System for Cognitively-Impaired Elders
Principal Investigator
Professor Wu, Chuan
(Principal Investigator (PI))
Duration
24
Start Date
2024-01-01
Amount
3774300
Conference Title
A Smart Speaker System for Cognitively-Impaired Elders
Keywords
Smart, Speaker System, Cognitively-Impaired, Elders
Discipline
Computer Science Fundamentals
HKU Project Code
ITS/269/22FP
Grant Type
Innovation and Technology Support Programme
Funding Year
2023
Status
On-going
Objectives
This project aims to design and develop the set of technologies to achieve a smartspeaker system for older adults with cognitive impairment (e.g., dementia of theAlzheimer's type). Cognitive impairment is common among older persons. Cognitivestimulation therapy through guided conversations coordinated by trained facilitators hasbeen shown effective in slowing cognitive decline of older persons. Our smart speakersystem is intended to provide cognitive stimulation conversations, together with dailyroutine and fact reminding functionalities, to play an active role in the daily life of acognitively-impaired person.Existing smart speaker systems are mostly built for normal people; there is no smartspeaker supporting older Cantonese-speaking persons with dysarthric speech forcognitive stimulation purposes. Our smart speaker system will be dedicated for olderCantonese-speaking users, providing critical functionalities not available in the existingmarket, including speech recognition of dysarthric Cantonese speech and intelligentconversations that provide useful and cognitively-stimulating information with caringemotions.We will develop the following set of AI technologies to enable this system: dysarthricspeech recognition, natural language processing/generation for cognitive stimulation,emotional dialogue and speech synthesis. We will carry out pilot user study (quantitativeand qualitative) with older persons with different levels of cognitive decline.