This paper presents the co-design process of a digital tool that may prevent or alleviate feelings of loneliness in older adults. Six workshops were conducted with older adults (n = 34) aged between 65–80 years old to investigate the role of technology in maintaining and establishing meaningful relationships. Participants’ contributions throughout the workshops were used to inform the design and development of a web-based loneliness intervention for older adults called ElderConnect. ElderConnect is a web-based application that supports older adults to identify, prevent, and alleviate feelings of loneliness by providing knowledge and strategies to initiate new social connections and maintain existing connections. Several challenges were identified while co-designing the application with older adults, and suggestions are provided in this paper to overcome such challenges. The study highlights how to include older adults’ concerns regarding technologies within an iterative co-design process, leading to an endorsed final product.

The remarkable ability of humans and animals to perform dynamic maneuvers, such as a jump, is largely attributed to series-elastic elements in skeletal muscle. Both the degree of elasticity and the coordination of muscular contractions have been shown to impact jump performance. The objective of this paper is to use a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize the control and actuator parameters of a series-elastic actuator (SEA), which is functionally analogous to skeletal muscle, in an articulated leg to produce the highest jump. Similar to skeletal muscle, the control and stiffness of the SEA is found by the GA to affect jump performance, yielding solutions with biological properties. In particular, the jumps evolved by the GA made use of the stretch and shortening cycle of the series-elasticity, which is commonly seen in nature to increase the force of an explosive movement. The model studied in this paper is of a prototype leg with series-elastic actuation. A detailed leg and actuator model was developed to include the important electrical and mechanical properties of the DC motors as well as the characteristics of the motor amplifiers.