MECA: A Cognitive Assistant for Physical Exercises that Monitors Emotions and the Environment.

Recent studies show that the elderly population has increased considerably in European society in recent years. This fact has led the European Union and many countries to propose new policies for caring services directed to this group. The current trend is to promote the care of the elderly in their own homes, thus avoiding inverting resources on residences. With this in mind, there are now new solutions in this direction, which try to make use of the continuous advances in computer science. This paper tries to advance in this area by proposing the use of a personal assistant to help older people at home while carrying out their daily activities. The proposed personal assistant is called MECA, and can be described as a cognitive assistant that offers users a personalised exercise plan for their rehabilitation. The system consists of a sensorisation platform along with decision-making algorithms paired with emotion detection models. MECA detects the users' emotions, which are used in the decision-making process allowing for more precise suggestions and an accurate (and unbiased) knowledge about the users' opinion towards each exercise.