Prof Bert Shi, Project Coordinator
Prof Stuart Gietel-Basten, Deputy Project Coordinator
Prof Fumin Zhang, Thrust Leader
Prof Janet Hsiao, Thrust Leader
Prof Can Yang, Thrust Leader
Prof Xiaojuan Ma, Thrust Leader
Prof Yangqiu Song, Thrust Leader
Prof Tim Cheng, Member
Prof Qifeng Chen, Member
Prof Hao Chen, Member
Prof Xiaomeng Li, Member
Life expectancy or lifespan in Hong Kong is among the world’s highest and has been increasing. Unfortunately, increases in health span – the period of time Hong Kongers are in good health – have not kept pace with the rise in longevity. This has resulted in a growing gap: the disability burden. We are spending an increasing percentage of our lives in a state of frailty and disability. This increases stress on our family members, caregivers, and healthcare systems. There is also an “inverted pyramid” of medical training: those who spend the most time caring for the frail elderly have the least formal training. These two trends have led to many unmet needs in elderly care.
Our mission is to improve older adults’ mental and physical care by developing human-centric frontier artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technology, which will empower both the elderly themselves and their carers to manage health and address frailty. Unlike conventional approaches to healthcare which typically consider diseases in isolation, the human-centric view at the core of our approach takes a broader multi-faceted perspective, recognizing that care should address not only medical but also social and psychological needs such as emotional support and companionship.
Mission
We will improve older adults’ mental and physical care at home, in the community, and in hospitals through the research, development, and deployment of human-centric and frontier AI and robotics technology.
Goals
Our team of multidisciplinary researchers will carry out frontier AI and robotics research grounded in real geriatric needs.
- Innovation in human-centric benchmarking and measuring frontier AI and robotics technology for geriatric care applications.
- Leading research in frontier generative AI technology and robotics with perception, interactive, reasoning, and planning abilities for monitoring, assessing and assisting older adults in various settings. Our research will ensure trustworthiness, safety, and other human-centric and sustainability dimensions.
- Educating the next generation of leaders with cross-disciplinary expertise in AI and robotics in the aging society.
For more details, please visit https://air4elderly.hkust.edu.hk/.