From May to June, the "HUST - UofT Joint Lecture Series" on smart aging and elder-caring robot, was organized by the Office of International Affairs and hosted by the School of Mechanical Science and Engineering.

This series focused on smart elder-caring in both China and Canada and invited Professor Shen Weiming from the School of Mechanical Science and Engineering of HUST, Professor Alex Mihailidis, vice president of the University of Toronto, and Dr. Shehroz Khan, a scientist in the AI and Robotics in Rehab Lab at the KITE, to deliver online lectures on the technical fields of intelligent home care, AgeTech, and artificial intelligence for biomedical engineering respectively.

More than 4,000 researchers and students from the University of Toronto, HUST and other universities at home and abroad, participated in the online lecture and engaged in lively discussions.

Smart home helps Aging-in-Place

On the evening of May 25th, the first lecture of the series went live online, Professor Shen Weiming gave a special speech entitled: Smart Home Helps Aging-in-Place: Research, Development, and Application. HUST Vice President Chen Jianguo, Alex Mihailidis, and representatives from the Office of International Affairs and other departments of HUST attended the lecture. The lecture was presided over by Associate Professor Fu Yan from the School of Mechanical Science and Engineering.

Chen Jianguo and Professor Alex Mihailidis each delivered a speech at the beginning of the lecture. Chen said that population aging is a common problem in both China and Canada. The two countries needed to work together to deal with the challenge of the demographic transformation and provide better technology and humanistic care for the elderly population.

Professor Mihailidis briefly introduced technologies and industrial development in Canada's pension field, aiming to conduct in-depth cooperation with more scholars in the same field at HUST through the Joint Research Center, and wished the lecture series a complete success.

Next, Professor Shen Weiming elaborated on the smart home to help aging-in-place from three aspects: the overview of intelligent aging-in-place, key technologies, and methods, system implementation, and application.

In the lecture, Professor Shen started from data on the aging populations of China and Canada, clarified the farsightedness and necessity of intelligent aging-in-place, and introduced the technological, industrial, and social acceptance challenges of the aging-in-place.

Supporting our Future Selves through AgeTech

On the morning of June 1st, Professor Alex Mihailidis delivered a special lecture entitled: Supporting our Future Selves through AgeTech.

In the lecture, Professor Mihailidis introduced the status quo of aging in countries around the world, as well as the recent changes in the demand for elderly care services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and pointed out that the necessity for increased technical investment in the field of elderly care. Then, he elaborated on the categories and application scenarios of elderly caring technology, and once again emphasized the importance of standards for intelligent aging-in-place systems.

Professor Mihailidis had an in-depth exchange with teachers and students attending the online meeting throughout the Q&A session, from specific technical issues to the development trend of elderly caring technology. Professor Mihailidis answered the questions raised by the participants in detail.

Artificial Intelligence for Biomedical Engineering

On the morning of June 14th, Dr. Shehroz Khan delivered a lecture entitled Artificial Intelligence for Biomedical Engineering: a Multidisciplinary and Convergent Approach.

Dr. Khan focused on the medical issues posed by the aging population. Combined with specific geriatric diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, agility, and cardiac rehabilitation, he explained how to apply machine learning to extract metrics from multiple sensors to predict, evaluate and intervene in various typical geriatric diseases.

The three lectures not only introduced the latest research results and technological developments in the field of intelligent elderly care but also shed light on the future problems and development directions of the field, providing great inspiration for the participants.

The lecture series was initiated and organized by HUST - UofT Smart Elderly Care and Robotics Joint Research Center, aiming to promote academic exchanges between scholars and students from both universities, encourage interdisciplinary research, and enhance mutual understanding between industry, education, and research in different fields.

At this point, the "HUST - UofT Joint Lecture Series" on smart aging and elder-caring robot was concluded. In the future, both sides will continue to hold a series of thematic technical seminars and student innovation and entrepreneurial projects, to promote bilateral cooperation in the field of industry, education, and research of smart old-age care.

Written by: Cheng Yifang

Edited by: Shi Can, Luo Xin, Jiang Jing