Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions IF project
Dr. VCoach
Employment of Advanced Deep Learning and Human-Robot Interaction for Virtual Coaching
Healthy ageing
The increase in global wealth and wellbeing results in an increased percentage of the elder population. In order to guarantee that people stay in charge of their own lives for as long as possible, regular physical activity is critical. The idea behind Dr. VCoach project is to realise a robotic coach able to propose exercises, monitor the execution (possibly correcting errors) and send the results to a doctor.
Promoting active ageing
The older slice of the population needs daily assistance and monitoring in order to live a safe and productive life, but prevention is better than cure. Technologies promoting active ageing appear to be the right solution to increase elders' independence and wellbeing.
Robotic coach
A computer, a screen, and a camera are enough to implement a virtual coach, but humanoids robots appear to be a promising solution. Interacting with a robot able to move and to show emotions is more engaging than staring at a computer screen.
Monitoring the exercises
The core feature of a robotic coach is the ability to recognise and predict human actions from its on board RGB/RGB-D cameras. The robot will eventually find some errors in the execution, suggesting a correction to the mistake.
New dataset for action prediction
We will introduce the procedure for the creation of a new video dataset containing sets of exercises performed by elders that will be augmented in simulation.
State of the art action predicion system
A novel action prediction model will be defined and implemented on the robotic coach. The core of the system will be a deep encoder/decoder fully convolutional network with recurrent blocks inside. The network will be able to predict the future RGB frames and recognise the action that is being performed.
Affordable solution
The system will be implemented on Zora (a robot based on the NAO). The Zora robot is affordable and it has all the sensors and actuators needed for the project.
Latest news
Gaining attention
Mar. 1st 2021Several Italian newspapers and television news talked about Dr.VCoach project. Click on the link to hear what they say