Photo: Center for Playware, DTU

Danish welfare-tech wins award in Singapore

Electrotechnology Robot technology and automation Medicine and medico technology
Modular welfare technology Moto Tiles, developed at DTU for eldercare, wins Product Innovation of the Year at the Asia Pacific Eldercare Innovation Awards.

By Henrik Hautop Lund and Tore Vind Jensen

The Asia Pacific Eldercare Innovation Awards recognize the best in eldercare product and service delivery at an annual awards-ceremony this year taking place in Singapore at The Ageing Asia Innovation Forum.

The award for best product implementation that demonstrates improvement in quality of life for older adults was presented to Professor Henrik Hautop Lund of Center for Playware at DTU who developed the Moto Tiles on the basis of more than 20 years of research into AI, robotics and playware.

"It is truly fantastic and a great honor for us, since the main award is given based on the judging of both the expert jury and all the delegates from the eldercare industry. It recognizes our research and development of playware technology from DTU, in the form of the Moto Tiles, and that it has a profound, positive influence on people's lives, allowing elderly to regain both cognitive and physical skills. Our persistency in continuous research and development in this area has produced this inspiring result, and we will be committed to continue on this road," says Professor Henrik Hautop Lund.

Moto Tiles are designed as an alternative form of physical rehabilitation exercise to allow elderly citizens to break away from monotonous training programs, and participate in an exercise that is fun and exciting, and therefore more motivating.

The tiles act like interactive LEGO bricks for physical interaction, and can be clicked together to form a path or surface on the floor. Each tile light up in blue, red, green, yellow or purple, encouraging interaction and physical play.

The tiles have been designed to activate the elderly by means of a variety of games, which can be selected and controlled on a tablet.

Qualitative studies show that therapists and elderly find the training with Moto Tiles fun and highly motivating. Further, scientific clinical effect studies at DTU show that training with the Moto Tiles has a large effect on the functional abilities of patients, and cognitive tests by Hitachi spin-out NeU show the effects on the brain. It is shown that playful training give significant effects with substantially less training sessions than what is needed with more traditional training methods. The Moto Tiles are used in rehabilitation centers, senior activity center, care homes, etc.

“I was especially impressed that the jury and delegates appreciated our iterative, evidence-based development so much, and they saw the Moto Tiles as the new intelligent LEGO bricks for playful physical interaction for seniors to be easily adapted to any context within eldercare to improve quality of life for all seniors,” concludes professor Henrik Hautop Lund.


Read more about Moto Tiles.