"This project helps us to demonstrate the idea of our next generation product, which opens up opportunity to a more tech-savvy population."
GeriJoy: Improving Elder Care Through Technology
ABOUT THE CLIENT:
SERVICES USED:
SERVICES USED:
The Challenge
GeriJoy found a solution by developing an app that connects families while providing peace of mind that their loved ones are receiving the highest quality care.
The Solution
Softjourn’s task was to develop an app to take care of seniors, providing them with a personal virtual assistant with whom they could talk and chat.
The Benefits
The application monitors the state of the network and when there is an issue, such as with the WiFi, it switches to 3G and the session continues without interruption.
The Challenge
Have you ever thought of the possibility to take care of your elderly relatives remotely? People are often so busy that they cannot give enough attention to their parents or grandparents, who live alone and need to feel someone’s care.
GeriJoy found a solution by developing an app that connects families while providing peace of mind that their loved ones are receiving the highest quality care.
This app allows seniors to talk with an avatar (say, a dog or a cat) the same way they would talk to another person in the room.
The sound is streamed over the Internet to a live GeriJoy Health Advocate, who responds instantly through a text-to-speech system, letting GeriJoy talk with residents with proper intelligence and compassion.
The Solution
Phase I – Proof of Concept
Our task was to make sure that all the necessary functionality would work on Android tablets. The previous app was written in Flash but the client wanted to rewrite it in Java. After some research into how to improve the existing service, our developers came up with several solutions.
Phase II – Application Development
Softjourn’s task was to develop an app to take care of seniors, providing them with a personal virtual assistant with whom they could talk and chat. Our team of developers was tasked to ensure the new application is efficient and safe and after talking to the client, we suggested that even some new functionalities could be added to the system.
The app includes two separate processes:
- Android app development service;
- The User Interface as a floating assistant or “avatar” that looks like a dog. The avatar shows different emotions, such as happy, sad or sleepy, and the resident can interact with it.
In the previous version of the app, the avatar also looked like a dog, but it was large, taking up the entire screen.
To make this assistant more flexible, we decided to make it a floating window, so that now the person can open any other program on their device, but the GeriJoy dog remains on top.
The resident can talk with an avatar through a webcam. Sound is streamed over the internet to a live GeriJoy Health Advocate, who responds instantly through a text-to-speech system.
Audio, video streaming, and client-server communication go via real-time communication protocols. One issue was how to implement one of the protocols on Android, as there are just a few libraries available. So we had to use a paid service.
The app was also tweaked to make sure that the internet connection is continuous.
The Benefits
The application monitors the state of the network and when there is an issue, such as with the WiFi, it switches to 3G and the session continues without interruption.
When there is no internet connection, the app just stops working, but as soon as the internet is up again, the system connects to the app and continues the session.
This makes it possible to continue a session instead of starting over again and losing data.
The Result
Softjourn developed an Android app for taking care of seniors. The benefits of the new app include:
The floating assistant remains on top of all other open windows on the tablet. This allows the resident to have the avatar available while doing other things at the same time, such as watching videos.
The internet connection is uninterrupted, which keeps the session going even when there are some issues with the connection.
Live video streaming uses an A/V streaming server, allowing real-time interaction between the senior and their avatar.