  This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to
research, innovate, explore and validate new interaction paradigms and
plat-forms for future generations of Personalized Virtual Coaches to assist
elderly people living independently at and around their home. Innovative
multimodal face analytics, adaptive spoken dialogue systems, and natural
language inter-faces are part of what the project investigates and innovates,
aiming to help dependent aging persons and their carers. It will uses remote,
non-intrusive technologies to extract physiological markers of emotional states
and adapt respective coach responses. In doing so, it aims to develop causal
models for emotionally believable coach-user interactions, which shall engage
elders and thus keep off loneliness, sustain health, enhance quality of life,
and simplify access to future telecare services. Through measurable end-user
validations performed in Spain, Norway and France (and complementary user
evaluations in Italy), the proposed methods and solutions will have to
demonstrate useful-ness, reliability, flexibility and robustness.
