The Human-centered solar smart technology design for healthy aging’ (SOL-TECH) research project will develop smart solar technology for healthy aging and has received a major grant of €750,000 of funding from the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation. The research takes a human-centred socio-technical approach to develop solar-powered smart sensors that monitor elderly people at home to detect and prevent falls. Associate Professor Paola Vivo from the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences id project PI, working together with Professors Johanna Ruusuvuori and Marja Kaunonen from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Sofie Pelsmakers from ASUTUT.
SOL-TECH will tackle the main issues relating to the independent living of seniors, particularly the risk of falling which is the leading cause of injury and death among the elderly population. The multidisciplinary SOL-TECH consortium proposes a socio-technical approach for co-creating with older people to rethink the existing fall prevention technologies and transforming them into a user-friendly and sustainable product powered by cutting-edge photovoltaic technology.
We will work together with older people and their carers to explore their needs and living environments as well as the fall risks and the opportunities and barriers for the use of technology that exist in their homes through ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews and architectural mapping. The proposed solutions will be developed and prototyped in cooperation with participants in co-design workshops and their homes. The usability, suitability, and acceptance of the prototypes as well as their in-situ performance will be studied in different home environments. There will be an exhibition showcasing the developed products and findings to maximise the benefits for society.
The project proposal was developed with the help of seed funding that Tampere University received from the Academy of Finland under the PROFI 5 call titled Sustainable Welfare Systems in late 2019.
The three-year SOL-TECH project will run from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2024.
SOL-TECH will tackle the main issues relating to the independent living of seniors, particularly the risk of falling which is the leading cause of injury and death among the elderly population. The multidisciplinary SOL-TECH consortium proposes a socio-technical approach for co-creating with older people to rethink the existing fall prevention technologies and transforming them into a user-friendly and sustainable product powered by cutting-edge photovoltaic technology.
We will work together with older people and their carers to explore their needs and living environments as well as the fall risks and the opportunities and barriers for the use of technology that exist in their homes through ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews and architectural mapping. The proposed solutions will be developed and prototyped in cooperation with participants in co-design workshops and their homes. The usability, suitability, and acceptance of the prototypes as well as their in-situ performance will be studied in different home environments. There will be an exhibition showcasing the developed products and findings to maximise the benefits for society.
The project proposal was developed with the help of seed funding that Tampere University received from the Academy of Finland under the PROFI 5 call titled Sustainable Welfare Systems in late 2019.
The three-year SOL-TECH project will run from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2024.
