Hochschule Karlsruhe Hochschule Karlsruhe - University of Applied Sciences
Hochschule Karlsruhe Hochschule Karlsruhe - University of Applied Sciences

Intelligent Systems Research Group

KARE

AI-supported assistance for hybrid interaction for home care

Team:
Prof. Dr. Astrid Laubenheimer
Prof. Dr. Matthias Wölfel
Samuel Zeitvogel M.Sc.
Christian Felix Purps M.Sc.

Funding: BMBF
Duration: 2022 - 2025

Website

Overview

Elderly people with care needs and their relatives are usually dependent on voluntary and semi-professional support services. If these can no longer be taken advantage of - for example in the case of a pandemic - this puts a strain on the already often fragile care arrangements. At the same time, limited contacts lead to an increased risk of social isolation and loneliness.

In KARE, a hybrid assistance system is developed that combines ambulatory care provision with a novel AI-based interaction system. A perceptual approach is used to recognize which everyday activities have already been mastered by care recipients and which are still outstanding. If the person in need of care cannot be motivated to perform these actions themselves by being actively addressed by KARE, KARE involves the caregivers in telepresence or on site. For the implementation of the project, the KARE consortium maps the entire value chain from research to technology to application in care and addresses the entire outpatient service spectrum of ambulatory care, assisted living as well as family caregivers in help-mix arrangements.

KARE supports the quality of life and health of care recipients through a novel, AI-based interaction system, while giving caregivers the freedom to adapt their activities to their own capabilities without limiting care delivery - not only in times of pandemic.

Partners & Funding

Our partners are Hochschule Furtwangen, Inferics GmbH, voice INTER connect GmbH, 3dvisionlabs GmbH, easierLife GmbH, BruderhausDiakonie.

HKA will take over the optical and acoustic perception as well as the activity analysis in close cooperation with the technology partners Inferics GmbH, voice INTER connect and 3dvisionlabs. The technology partners extend the optical perception capabilities of PatronuSens multimodally and integrate the sensor platform into KARE-Sens. The easierLife GmbH acts as a system integrator and will adapt its cloud infrastructure, and implement the necessary interfaces, processes and applications. HFU acts as the interface between technical research and the application field of care. The application partner BruderhausDiakonie contributes the necessary practical relevance and works together with the scientific partners HKA and HFU on the methodological planning and implementation of the needs assessment together with elderly clients and the nursing and care staff, the participatory research processes, and the application-related evaluation and is responsible for the organization of the ethical monitoring and the scientific accompanying project.

 

KARE is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the funding code 16SV8803.