ActivE3: Fostering Social Inclusion Through Collaborative Physical and Cognitive Exercise

Preventing and reducing physical and cognitive decay in older adults is among the challenges of Healthcare 5.0. The research project ActivE3 aims at promoting older adults’ health and social inclusion through regular physical activity, leveraging an ICT-enabled network composed of elderlies, young people, and clinical personnel. Using a virtual reality-based application (SocialBike), older adults can adopt a healthier lifestyle while socializing with youngers through collaborative exercise. The exercise involves both physical and cognitive training, as users must cycle on a stationary bike while recognizing target animals or objects appearing along the way. Using wearable sensors and relying on clinical expertise, ActivE3 exploits semantic reasoning capabilities to tailor exercise’s workload and goals according to the specific users’ health conditions and abilities. The system stores the results from each exercise session and dispatches them to clinical personnel, to support the non-invasive monitoring of frail older adults’ health conditions.