Gaia AE - Space Apps Challenge

Gaia AE| The Isolation Solution

The Isolation Solution

Social distancing policies enacted the world over during the COVID-19 pandemic have left many people socially isolated. Your challenge is to develop innovative solutions to combat social isolation.

Gaia

Summary

We created a game-like application that, using machine learning, can identify the psychological profiles of users, helping them maintain their mental health during social isolation. This profile is drawn from interactions at the application, analysis of usage of other applications, data about social interaction (such as logbooks or blogs kept by astronauts in the ISS, for example) and physiological data, obtained by the accompanying hardware used by astronauts, or by personal-use hardware people carry every day. The result is a suggestion of approaches for direct mitigation (such as music or meditation) or indirect mitigation (such as contacting a close friend or a relative).

How We Addressed This Challenge

The application can produce a psychological profile of users by cross-analyzing their interaction with the interface, digital presence information (social media, blogs, logbooks), and behavioral patterns. Mitigation solutions can then be suggested to the user in a challenge format. The advice is optimized according to users’ needs and can range from meditation to music to having a conversation with relatives. In cases of extreme behavior, family or friends can be alerted and encouraged to interact with the user. The result is a better use of the resources and support available to people, and, with that, a healthier mind.

How We Developed This Project

Being part of a society and of all the rites and behaviors inserted in it is something intrinsic to the human being, with some theorists like Aristotle considering it as one of the fundamental principles of humanity. But what to do when we are faced with the imminent and compulsory solitude?

In recent months, people all over the world have faced a challenge that until now concerned only field researchers and astronauts on mission: social isolation. Even those who receive intensive training, however, present difficulties in dealing with the situation. According to data from the Human Research Road Map, space travel lasting upwards of a year requires psychological mitigation in order to maintain the operational capabilities of the crew, and those longer than 3 years require health mitigation. Despite tireless efforts to develop applications and tests, researchers have not yet achieved solutions that are capable of providing all the necessary support. In a world where over 264 million people suffer from depression (according to the World Health Organization) and many more are under social isolation, this scenario points to a dire worsening of mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That is why we developed Gaia, an intelligent virtual assistant to help people avoid the deterioration of their mental well-being during this difficult time. Based on logbooks, the Watson assistant, and several other behavioral tests demonstrated in the Human Road Map file repository provided by NASA, we used machine learning concepts to design an interactive platform capable of monitoring and identifying behavioral and mood changes in people in isolation. In an integrated account of social interactions and data from other existing applications, the service proposes mitigations and customized options that make this period of isolation mentally healthier.

We developed our application in Python using libraries like Selenium and Panda, but did not employ any third-party deep learning API’s. The intelligent bot was created using concepts of Natural Language Processing for interpreting information both from the chat and from other sources (using web scraping). For our preliminary product, we used WhatsApp as a base for the chatbot, which is the core of our proposal. We also collected the data to be used to train the algorithm, which featured heavily the stress detection datasets provided by NASA.

Times of hardship forcefully shatter social habits and demand the creation of new ones, and we believe that our initiative can be a step precisely in that direction. An AI that can help individuals facing anxiety, depression, and loneliness is not just beneficial for a viral pandemic. The inner struggles many suffer from today have always existed, and the pandemic must be used as an imminent motivation for innovative solutions to wide-ranging concerns like mental health. Gaia is not a niche service; it has the power to help hundreds of millions of people. It is a new way of combating the anguishes that have always existed (and always will exist) in us. Today and tomorrow; on Earth and in space.

Project Demo

https://youtu.be/HawryoZfjaM

Project Code

https://github.com/josantosc/GAIA-NASASpaceApps2020 https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ZSY6NCAhZTgcB7KCTEBswe19ItlLw89L?usp=sharing

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