Yagellonian University is developing a trainer application using the capabilities of IBM Watson

IBM, together with the Institute of Applied Psychology of the Jagiellonian University, relatively recently began to develop the JaneAI application. This program is designed as a personal physical activity trainer. The system, as the developers say, will analyze the physical activity of its users and motivate them to do the exercises on a regular basis. And yes, the software platform is different from everything that has been released in this area so far. This is because helping a person will be not just an application, but a whole cognitive system.

It is no secret that now a large number of people lead a sedentary lifestyle, from which their health suffers, their health worsens, their ability to work and their ability to concentrate decrease. In order to motivate people to exercise, wearable device developers offer a variety of ways - from social networking contests to simple reminders to take so many steps. But perhaps the cognitive system will be able to help the user more efficiently than ordinary gadgets.

Since the joint project is carried out in Poland, the project team members' statistics are given for this country. So, every third Pole, according to statistics, refuses to perform physical exercises, ignoring an active lifestyle. As for wearable devices, according to EndeavorPartners, about a third of users stop using them in the first six months.
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Understanding all this, the developers of the project team decided to try to look for a way to encourage a person to be physically active. All this ended with the development of the JaneApp application. Using the Watson Converstion software interface, the application communicates with its user using neutral words and expressions that do not annoy the user.

In addition, the program collects daily data about the user's activity and habits. The data collected includes information such as the number of steps a person takes per day, the number of calories burned and a number of other important factors. But besides, JaneApp can also feel the user's mood, understanding motivation. For this service analyzes the information posted by a person in social networks. Further, using this information, the application tries to determine what the person may be interested in, seeking an individual approach to its user.

In the process, the application uses a large amount of data related to applied psychology.

“Mobile cognitive technologies give us direct access to specialist support at the right time in the right place,” says Professor Peter Zhedinak (Piotr Jedynak), one of the project participants.



In general, the task of the whole team is to show that cognitive systems can give support to many people in different life situations. IBM Watson is already helping medical professionals — both oncology specialists and traumatologists. Now with the new application, developers are hoping to give a new impetus to a healthy lifestyle, popularizing it among all categories of the population.

Collecting data from the project will help scientists explore the behavioral characteristics of various people who somehow affect health. The project will be launched after several hundred participants register on the site. The duration of the project is about 10 weeks. In order to take part in the test, you need to download the application Jane AI Health Coach . More information about the application itself can be found here .

The project is, of course, experimental. We would like to know if the cognitive systems will succeed in inspiring a person to play sports using some knowledge about the user's identity (basically, information that can be obtained from public sources is meant).