Glassistant

Virtual assistant to support people with MCI based on smart glasses

Glassistant is a virtual assistant based on smart glasses to support people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Mild cognitive impairment is a cognitive impairment characterized by subjective and objective limitations in the areas of memory, attention and reasoning. This can lead to difficulties with more complex everyday tasks. It can also be a first sign of dementia.

We developed Glassistant to support patients affected by MCI with daily tasks. Glassistant is intended to give MCI patients the opportunity to participate independently in their social environment for longer. This is provided by an unobtrusive assistant who uses smart glasses to become active when needed and offer assistance. Sensors can determine when assistance is needed. If the user's stress level rises, Glassistant analyzes the current environment and uses augmented reality to display information on objects, location or the general daily routine, for example. There was also a function to remind the user to take their medication.

Another important goal was to avoid stigmatizing the user. The use of smart glasses is therefore particularly suitable, because although currently available devices are still visually recognizable as such, the rapid development in this area means that it can be assumed that smart glasses will be fully integrated into conventional glasses in a few years' time and will therefore no longer be recognizable as an aid. Irrespective of the visual unobtrusiveness, another key aspect of the project was the unobtrusiveness of the operation: the user does not necessarily have to manually ask the system for help, but the current emotions and situations of the person are automatically recognized and assistance is automatically displayed or offered.