The rise of mobile Internet, immersive and ubiquitous technologies have spread and diversified the social media used by people to interact among them. The elderly also have a strong need to maintain social activities, especially those who live alone or in social isolation. Social interaction affects their physical and mental health in many ways. However, there are many factors that restrict the elderly's experience of using social media, such as learning costs, privacy, and so on. Through interdisciplinary research methods, the project aims to provide the design and development of social interaction for older adults to support a more equal, effective, and natural social connectedness. The research will include 1) experience of social interaction for the elderly 2) the design of natural social interaction in mixed reality 3) the intelligent companion terminal, such as social robots, telepresence robots, etc.

Progress

In terms of user experience research, the project is currently conducting a workshop on the design of intelligent home appliances with the theme of companionship and intends to conduct research on the impact of social isolation on the social activities of the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In terms of social interaction design based on VR/AR/MR, the project is currently building a human 3D reconstruction platform and has investigated various immersive display solutions such as wearable and naked-eye 3D displays.

In terms of intelligent social terminal design and implementation, the project has designed and completed an intelligent assembly robot project for beginners. At present, we plan to complete the interactive design and hardware platform of the emotional social mediator robot. Serval research topics are planned to conduct about the factors that influence the communication experience of remote users using mediator robots, such as etiquette, initiation, and behavioral retargeting.

Some of the research results have been published in CHI, RO-MAN, Journal of Computer-Aided Design and Graphics, and others have been submitted to TEI, CHI2022, and other conferences.