iTVCare: A home care system for the elderly through interactive television

In the world, many older adults are living alone for most of the day. This work propose the use of the television set, a medium well known by seniors, to improve the way that seniors and their caregivers can track daily activities such as medication intakes reminders. Two evaluations were held, a heuristic usability assessment early on the design process and an evaluation of the technology adoption. Both evaluations generated initial evidence that the system supported elders in achieving a better quality of life

A Service-oriented Architecture for Ambient-Assisted Living

Ambient-Assisted Living (AAL) is currently an important research and development area, mainly due to the rapidly aging society, the increasing cost of health care, and the growing importance that individuals place on living independently. The general goal of AAL solutions is to apply ambient-assisted intelligence to enable people with specific demands (e.g. handicapped or elderly) to live in their preferred environment longer by tools (i.e. smart objects, mobile and wearable sensors, intelligent devices) being sensitive and responsive to the presence of people and their actions. The research describes the design and development of a novel service-oriented system architecture where different smart objects and sensors are combined to offer ambient-assisted living intelligence to older people. The design stage is driven by a user-centred approach to define an interoperable architecture and human-oriented principles to create usable products and well-accepted services. Such architecture has been realized in the context of an Italian research project funded by the Marche Region and promoted by INRCA (National Institute on Health and Science of Aging) in the framework of smart home for active ageing and ambient assisted living. The result is an interoperable and flexible platform that allows creating user-centred services for independent living

Technologies for Monitoring Lifestyle Habits Related to Brain Health : A Systematic Review

Brain health refers to the preservation of brain integrity and function optimized for an individual's biological age. Several studies have demonstrated that our lifestyles habits impact our brain health and our cognitive and mental wellbeing. Monitoring such lifestyles is thus critical and mobile technologies are essential to enable such a goal. Three databases were selected to carry out the search. Then, a PRISMA and PICOTS based criteria for a more detailed review on the basis of monitoring lifestyle aspects were used to filter the publications. We identified 133 publications after removing duplicates. Fifteen were finally selected from our criteria. Many studies still use questionnaires as the only tool for monitoring and do not apply advanced analytic or AI approaches to fine-tune results. We anticipate a transformative boom in the near future developing and implementing solutions that are able to integrate, in a flexible and adaptable way, data from technologies and devices that users might already use. This will enable continuous monitoring of objective data to guide the personalized definition of lifestyle goals and data-driven coaching to offer the necessary support to ensure adherence and satisfaction

Proceedings of the X Iberoamerican Conference on Applications and Usability of Interactive TV jAUTI2021

The X Ibero-American Conference on Applications and Usability of TVDI jAUTI 2021 is an organization of the Department of Electricity, Electronics and Telecommunications and the WiCOM-Energy Research Group of the University of the Armed Forces ESPE together with RedAUTI (Thematic Network on Applications and Usability of Interactive Digital Television). This year's edition was held from December 2 to 3, 2021 in the city of Sangolquí, Ecuador, taking place online. This book brings together 18 works presented on the design, development and experiences of applications for interactive digital television and related technologies (IPTV, Smart TV, Connected TV, and Web TV).La X Conferencia Iberoamericana de Aplicaciones y Usabilidad de la TVDI jAUTI 2021 es una organización del Departamento de Electricidad, Electrónica y Telecomunicaciones y el Grupo de Investigación WiCOM-Energy de la Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE junto con la RedAUTI (Red temática en Aplicaciones y Usabilidad de Televisión Digital Interactiva). La edición de este año se realizó del 2 al 3 de diciembre de 2021 en la ciudad de Sangolquí, Ecuador, llevándose a cabo en modalidad online. Este libro reúne 18 trabajos presentados sobre el diseño, desarrollo y experiencias sobre aplicaciones para televisión digital interactiva y tecnologías relacionadas (IPTV, Smart TV, Connected TV, and Web TV).A X Conferência Ibero-Americana de Aplicações e Usabilidade da TVDI jAUTI 2021 é uma organização do Departamento de Eletricidade, Eletrônica e Telecomunicações e do Grupo de Pesquisa WiCOM-Energy da Universidade das Forças Armadas ESPE juntamente com a RedAUTI (Rede Temática sobre Aplicações e Usabilidade da Televisão Digital Interativa). A edição deste ano foi realizada de 2 a 3 de dezembro de 2021 na cidade de Sangolquí, Equador, online. Este livro reúne 18 trabalhos apresentados sobre design, desenvolvimento e experiências em aplicativos para televisão digital interativa e tecnologias relacionadas (IPTV, Smart TV, Connected TV e Web TV).RedAUT

Conception, design and evaluation of an ICT platform for independent living and remote health monitoring

The current society is dealing with a progressive ageing of the population. Life expectancy is constantly increasing and, at the same time, families tend to have less children than in the past. For these reasons, the global proportion of people aged 60 or over is expected to outnumber the younger age groups. This trend will have a serious impact on the society, since the health related costs will rise, there will be a lack of professional caregivers trained to assist the elderly and more and more people will suffer from chronic diseases that must be treated somehow. To overcome this situation, in the past years many initiatives aiming at increasing the elderly independence were born. The problemin developing technological systems for the elderly is that they are reluctant to try out newsystems and devices, so a great emphasismust be put on the design of an acceptable and usable solution. In this thesis, an ICT platform for independent living of older adults is presented. The platform is based on a standard TV and remote control, in order to lower the risk of technology refusal by older people, and aims at offering a rich set of services that include social networking, support, welfare and health. The health aspect is important but not the leading one, since such platformshould be first perceived as useful for different aspects of their daily life, and not strictly related to the concept the being oldmeans having health problems. Another aimof the proposed platformis to expand the offered services by involving external service providers, that will exploit the basic functionalities offered natively by the platform. The aspects related to the initial studies that let to the definition of system requirements and technical specifications will be presented, together with some preliminary usability results obtained from several user tests. Starting from mid 2016, the proposed platformwill be tested during three field trials in Italy, Belgiumand the Netherlands

Towards a Sustainable Life: Smart and Green Design in Buildings and Community

This Special Issue includes contributions about occupants’ sustainable living in buildings and communities, highlighting issues surrounding the sustainable development of our environments and lives by emphasizing smart and green design perspectives. This Special Issue specifically focuses on research and case studies that develop promising methods for the sustainable development of our environment and identify factors critical to the application of a sustainable paradigm for quality of life from a user-oriented perspective. After a rigorous review of the submissions by experts, fourteen articles concerning sustainable living and development are published in this Special Issue, written by authors sharing their expertise and approaches to the concept and application of sustainability in their fields. The fourteen contributions to this special issue can be categorized into four groups, depending on the issues that they address. All the proposed methods, models, and applications in these studies contribute to the current understanding of the adoption of the sustainability paradigm and are likely to inspire further research addressing the challenges of constructing sustainable buildings and communities resulting in a sustainable life for all of society

Towards a Legal end Ethical Framework for Personal Care Robots. Analysis of Person Carrier, Physical Assistant and Mobile Servant Robots.

Technology is rapidly developing, and regulators and robot creators inevitably have to come to terms with new and unexpected scenarios. A thorough analysis of this new and continuosuly evolving reality could be useful to better understand the current situation and pave the way to the future creation of a legal and ethical framework. This is clearly a wide and complex goal, considering the variety of new technologies available today and those under development. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the evaluation of the impacts of personal care robots. In particular, it analyzes how roboticists adjust their creations to the existing regulatory framework for legal compliance purposes. By carrying out an impact assessment analysis, existing regulatory gaps and lack of regulatory clarity can be highlighted. These gaps should of course be considered further on by lawmakers for a future legal framework for personal care robot. This assessment should be made first against regulations. If the creators of the robot do not encounter any limitations, they can then proceed with its development. On the contrary, if there are some limitations, robot creators will either (1) adjust the robot to comply with the existing regulatory framework; (2) start a negotiation with the regulators to change the law; or (3) carry out the original plan and risk to be non-compliant. The regulator can discuss existing (or lacking) regulations with robot developers and give a legal response accordingly. In an ideal world, robots are clear of impacts and therefore threats can be responded in terms of prevention and opportunities in form of facilitation. In reality, the impacts of robots are often uncertain and less clear, especially when they are inserted in care applications. Therefore, regulators will have to address uncertain risks, ambiguous impacts and yet unkown effects