Towards a proactive cooking companion for the elderly
Katarina Esteve, Morgan Fredriksson, Joakim Gustafson, Dimosthenis Kontogiorgos, Timo Mashiyi-Veikkola
Correct Metadata for
Abstract
Aging-in-place policies leave elderly populations vulnerable to declining nutrition and social isolation. This paper presents a voice-based cooking assistant designed as a companion, addressing both nutritional and social needs through intelligent kitchen interaction. Through WoZ experiments, we validated: social dialogue serves functional purposes, where "chatty" assistants transform cooking pauses into engaging interactions while instructional-only versions create frustrating dead air, despite identical timing.- Anthology ID:
- 2026.iwsds-1.15
- Volume:
- Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology
- Month:
- February
- Year:
- 2026
- Address:
- Trento, Italy
- Editors:
- Giuseppe Riccardi, Seyed Mahed Mousavi, Maria Ines Torres, Koichiro Yoshino, Zoraida Callejas, Shammur Absar Chowdhury, Yun-Nung Chen, Frederic Bechet, Joakim Gustafson, Géraldine Damnati, Alex Papangelis, Luis Fernando D’Haro, John Mendonça, Raffaella Bernardi, Dilek Hakkani-Tur, Giuseppe "Pino" Di Fabbrizio, Tatsuya Kawahara, Firoj Alam, Gokhan Tur, Michael Johnston
- Venue:
- IWSDS
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- Association for Computational Linguistics
- Note:
- Pages:
- 134–141
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2026.iwsds-1.15/
- DOI:
- Bibkey:
- Cite (ACL):
- Katarina Esteve, Morgan Fredriksson, Joakim Gustafson, Dimosthenis Kontogiorgos, and Timo Mashiyi-Veikkola. 2026. Towards a proactive cooking companion for the elderly. In Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology, pages 134–141, Trento, Italy. Association for Computational Linguistics.
- Cite (Informal):
- Towards a proactive cooking companion for the elderly (Esteve et al., IWSDS 2026)
- Copy Citation:
- PDF:
- https://aclanthology.org/2026.iwsds-1.15.pdf
Export citation
@inproceedings{esteve-etal-2026-towards,
title = "Towards a proactive cooking companion for the elderly",
author = "Esteve, Katarina and
Fredriksson, Morgan and
Gustafson, Joakim and
Kontogiorgos, Dimosthenis and
Mashiyi-Veikkola, Timo",
editor = "Riccardi, Giuseppe and
Mousavi, Seyed Mahed and
Torres, Maria Ines and
Yoshino, Koichiro and
Callejas, Zoraida and
Chowdhury, Shammur Absar and
Chen, Yun-Nung and
Bechet, Frederic and
Gustafson, Joakim and
Damnati, G{\'e}raldine and
Papangelis, Alex and
D{'}Haro, Luis Fernando and
Mendon{\c{c}}a, John and
Bernardi, Raffaella and
Hakkani-Tur, Dilek and
Di Fabbrizio, Giuseppe {''}Pino{''} and
Kawahara, Tatsuya and
Alam, Firoj and
Tur, Gokhan and
Johnston, Michael",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology",
month = feb,
year = "2026",
address = "Trento, Italy",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.iwsds-1.15/",
pages = "134--141",
abstract = "Aging-in-place policies leave elderly populations vulnerable to declining nutrition and social isolation. This paper presents a voice-based cooking assistant designed as a companion, addressing both nutritional and social needs through intelligent kitchen interaction. Through {W}o{Z} experiments, we validated: social dialogue serves functional purposes, where ``chatty'' assistants transform cooking pauses into engaging interactions while instructional-only versions create frustrating dead air, despite identical timing."
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%0 Conference Proceedings %T Towards a proactive cooking companion for the elderly %A Esteve, Katarina %A Fredriksson, Morgan %A Gustafson, Joakim %A Kontogiorgos, Dimosthenis %A Mashiyi-Veikkola, Timo %Y Riccardi, Giuseppe %Y Mousavi, Seyed Mahed %Y Torres, Maria Ines %Y Yoshino, Koichiro %Y Callejas, Zoraida %Y Chowdhury, Shammur Absar %Y Chen, Yun-Nung %Y Bechet, Frederic %Y Gustafson, Joakim %Y Damnati, Géraldine %Y Papangelis, Alex %Y D’Haro, Luis Fernando %Y Mendonça, John %Y Bernardi, Raffaella %Y Hakkani-Tur, Dilek %Y Di Fabbrizio, Giuseppe ”Pino” %Y Kawahara, Tatsuya %Y Alam, Firoj %Y Tur, Gokhan %Y Johnston, Michael %S Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology %D 2026 %8 February %I Association for Computational Linguistics %C Trento, Italy %F esteve-etal-2026-towards %X Aging-in-place policies leave elderly populations vulnerable to declining nutrition and social isolation. This paper presents a voice-based cooking assistant designed as a companion, addressing both nutritional and social needs through intelligent kitchen interaction. Through WoZ experiments, we validated: social dialogue serves functional purposes, where “chatty” assistants transform cooking pauses into engaging interactions while instructional-only versions create frustrating dead air, despite identical timing. %U https://aclanthology.org/2026.iwsds-1.15/ %P 134-141
Markdown (Informal)
[Towards a proactive cooking companion for the elderly](https://aclanthology.org/2026.iwsds-1.15/) (Esteve et al., IWSDS 2026)
- Towards a proactive cooking companion for the elderly (Esteve et al., IWSDS 2026)
ACL
- Katarina Esteve, Morgan Fredriksson, Joakim Gustafson, Dimosthenis Kontogiorgos, and Timo Mashiyi-Veikkola. 2026. Towards a proactive cooking companion for the elderly. In Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology, pages 134–141, Trento, Italy. Association for Computational Linguistics.