An Immersive Low-Latency Audio System for Social Interaction with Elderly People

The involvement of elderly individuals in social activities is important for their well-being and to keep their minds active. When these individuals spend a lot of time in solitude, for example due to mobility difficulties or lack of private or public transportation, it is necessary to intervene in some way directly within their homes. In this context, the purpose of the work is to present a system that allows engaging elderly people in interactive sessions with a social worker, capable of conversing with the person or even better, involving them in a therapeutic session, be it a rehabilitation (e.g. speech or lung therapy) or music therapy session. The proposed system is focused on an immersive audio system to create a realistic communication experience, and it is based on technologies that allow high-bandwidth low-latency audio and video links. The paper describes a scalable system with the possibility of using multichannel approaches such as Ambisonics or binaural techniques and discusses available technologies for establishing the communication highlighting the lack of off-the-shelf solutions. The proposed approach and its usability in different scenarios are described.