The GIANT research group of the UJI creates a conversational robot for the detection of unwanted solitude 



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## The GIANT research group of the UJI creates a conversational robot for the detection of unwanted solitude

14/04/2020 |
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The tool developed is part of the work carried out by an interdisciplinary scientific team in the fields of psychology and computer science that wants to respond to one of the current social challenges.

There is ample evidence of the possible adverse effects of unwanted solitude on people that has led specialists to consider it a public health problem. In these moments of confinement, forced by the health alert created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people in this situation has increased; but, for many, this is not an exceptional situation, but a daily reality, as indicated by the high number of elderly people living alone who, given the circumstances, have seen their social isolation further aggravated.

In order to mitigate these kind of situations, it is important to have tools that make it easier for health professionals to detect people at risk of lonesomeness, because this is the first step in being able to carry out interventions that will improve this situation. This has been the objective of the GIANT research group (Machine Learning for Smart Environments) of the Universitat Jaume I in the creation of SERENA, a conversational robot that facilitates the location of people in undesired situations of solitude.

Serena is a citizen science project funded by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), which promotes in its calls for proposals the realisation of actions that bring science closer to society. Serena is the name of the chatbot designed to talk to people and evaluate their feelings of loneliness. Thanks to the opportunities provided by new information and communication technologies (ICT), anyone can talk to Serena from their mobile device.

The project "Automatic Learning as a Citizen Science Tool to Improve the Quality of Life of Elderly People and their Caregivers" is led by the lecturers Óscar Belmonte from the Department of Languages and Computer Systems and Antonio Caballer from the Department of Evolutionary, Educational and Social Psychology and Methodology, with the participation of researchers Andrea Castillo, Arturo Gascó, Raúl Montoliu, Emilio Sansano, Agustín López and Rubén García.  This is the first FECYT project developed at the Universitat Jaume I in the new line of action of citizen science and has the close participation of the Castelló de la Plana City Council and the Red Cross, and other entities such as La Plana University Hospital in Vila-real and Teléfono de la Esperanza.

The tool developed is part of the work carried out by an interdisciplinary scientific team in the fields of psychology and computer science that wants to respond to one of the current social challenges, the loneliness of the elderly, with the relevant impact this could have on the welfare of the population in our environment. The project takes advantage of the opportunities of technology to gather the population’s involvement, within the framework of citizen science, as an example of research where society plays a leading role in the different stages of scientific work and whose circumstances have been aggravated by the current state of alarm.

The main objective is to bring the scientific work closer to the citizens in a participative and accessible way, through a project of social and inclusive interest such as tools based on artificial intelligence (specifically automatic learning), with the purpose of helping in the analysis of constructs such as solitude, loneliness, social isolation, well-being or stress, among others, related mainly to the elderly and people who take care of them in a formal or informal way.

The initiative has a website that explains how to participate and how Serena can learn to detect loneliness: <https://gerontec.uji.es/>

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