Interest in and personal commitment to health have risen sharply. Yet many people find it difficult to identify and implement health-promoting changes in familiar routines and environments on their own.

The new Eghi project aims to change that. Scientists at paluno and their project partners are developing a learning assistance system based on artificial intelligence (AI) that supports people in healthy behavior. The assistance system is intended to provide personalized behavioral recommendations, such as exercise incentives or advice on reducing health risks, which are directly related to the current situation and easy to implement. For example, the system might recommend a user, who the system has learned he or she likes to walk, to walk to an appointment if time and weather permit. 

Multidisciplinary research approach  

In its implementation, the Eghi project relies on the concept of augmented intelligence, which means that AI and human judgment work together to make correct, in this case healthy, decisions. To this end, the project team pursues a multidisciplinary research approach and combines AI methods with behavioral modeling methods and concepts for human-technology interaction. 

In the first step, the researchers want to observe the activities and behavior patterns of the users with sensors and thus build up a common pool of experience between humans and technology. Subsequently, the user data is to be condensed with the help of AI in such a way that personalized recommendations for action can be derived. Because these recommendations are directly related to experiences and the current situation, they are easy to implement and understand for the users – as is the expectation of the researchers. In this context, the paluno working group investigates different types of interaction (visual, auditory, vibro-tactile) with different media such as smartphones, wearables on the wrist, smart glasses or smart clothing. 

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the project as part of the funding priority "Adaptive Technologies for Society - Intelligent Interaction of Humans and Artificial Intelligence" with around 1.8 million Euros for a period of three years. In addition to the paluno working group "Human-Computer Interaction" of Professor Schneegaß, the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg as project coordinator as well as the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, the BODYMED AG and the Interactive Wear AG are involved in the project.  

About the Eghi project: https://www.eghi-projekt.de/

Link to the working group: https://www.hci.wiwi.uni-due.de/en/