After more than 36 months of joint development in the SAAM project, with the beginning of 2021 eight prototypical implementations of the SAAM Basic System were successfully installed in the homes of Austrian older adults in Vienna and Salzburg.
The men and women, who were between 69 and 80 years old, tested the system for 12 weeks and longer and reported the experiences they made back to the researchers of the Center for HCI, who set-up, lead, and accompanied the pilot phase together with project partner EURAG Österreich. The valuable insights that could be gained will be summarized in the project’s final report, which will be publicly available on the project’s official website in the second half of this year.
In Austria, the system was designed to coach the older participants in improving their sleeping habits. After an initial calibration and machine learning phase, during which the system collected data to get to know the participants’ routines and behaviors, in the actual coaching phase the participants received coaching advice based on their sleeping habits and behaviors with the aim to enhance their overall sleep quality and well-being.
Besides Austria, SAAM Basic systems were also installed and tested in Bulgaria, and to some extend in Slovenia. The focus in Bulgaria, was on improving physical activity in older adults and counteracting social isolation, while in Slovenia the focus was not centered on age and age-related issues but on enhancing the mobility of people who suffered from limb amputations.
The SAAM Basic System will be further enhanced and developed based on the data and knowledge, which could be gained during these first successful pilots in the field, by the technical partners in the project.