Towards Smart Homes Using Low Level Sensory Data

Ubiquitous Life Care (u-Life care) is receiving attention because it provides high quality and low cost care services. To provide spontaneous and robust healthcare services, knowledge of a patient’s real-time daily life activities is required. Context information with real-time daily life activities can help to provide better services and to improve healthcare delivery. The performance and accuracy of existing life care systems is not reliable, even with a limited number of services. This paper presents a Human Activity Recognition Engine (HARE) that monitors human health as well as activities using heterogeneous sensor technology and processes these activities intelligently on a Cloud platform for providing improved care at low cost. We focus on activity recognition using video-based, wearable sensor-based, and location-based activity recognition engines and then use intelligent processing to analyze the context of the activities performed. The experimental results of all the components showed good accuracy against existing techniques. The system is deployed on Cloud for Alzheimer’s disease patients (as a case study) with four activity recognition engines to identify low level activity from the raw data captured by sensors. These are then manipulated using ontology to infer higher level activities and make decisions about a patient’s activity using patient profile information and customized rules

Big data analytics:Computational intelligence techniques and application areas

Big Data has significant impact in developing functional smart cities and supporting modern societies. In this paper, we investigate the importance of Big Data in modern life and economy, and discuss challenges arising from Big Data utilization. Different computational intelligence techniques have been considered as tools for Big Data analytics. We also explore the powerful combination of Big Data and Computational Intelligence (CI) and identify a number of areas, where novel applications in real world smart city problems can be developed by utilizing these powerful tools and techniques. We present a case study for intelligent transportation in the context of a smart city, and a novel data modelling methodology based on a biologically inspired universal generative modelling approach called Hierarchical Spatial-Temporal State Machine (HSTSM). We further discuss various implications of policy, protection, valuation and commercialization related to Big Data, its applications and deployment

User-centered design of a dynamic-autonomy remote interaction concept for manipulation-capable robots to assist elderly people in the home

In this article, we describe the development of a human-robot interaction concept for service robots to assist elderly people in the home with physical tasks. Our approach is based on the insight that robots are not yet able to handle all tasks autonomously with sufficient reliability in the complex and heterogeneous environments of private homes. We therefore employ remote human operators to assist on tasks a robot cannot handle completely autonomously. Our development methodology was user-centric and iterative, with six user studies carried out at various stages involving a total of 241 participants. The concept is under implementation on the Care-O-bot 3 robotic platform. The main contributions of this article are (1) the results of a survey in form of a ranking of the demands of elderly people and informal caregivers for a range of 25 robot services, (2) the results of an ethnography investigating the suitability of emergency teleassistance and telemedical centers for incorporating robotic teleassistance, and (3) a user-validated human-robot interaction concept with three user roles and corresponding three user interfaces designed as a solution to the problem of engineering reliable service robots for home environments

Assistive technology design and development for acceptable robotics companions for ageing years

© 2013 Farshid Amirabdollahian et al., licensee Versita Sp. z o. o. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author.A new stream of research and development responds to changes in life expectancy across the world. It includes technologies which enhance well-being of individuals, specifically for older people. The ACCOMPANY project focuses on home companion technologies and issues surrounding technology development for assistive purposes. The project responds to some overlooked aspects of technology design, divided into multiple areas such as empathic and social human-robot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, and monitoring persons’ activities at home. To bring these aspects together, a dedicated task is identified to ensure technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-Bot®3 in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. Formative and summative evaluation cycles are then used to assess the emerging prototype towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot, for example role as a butler or a trainer, while also comparing user requirements to achieved progress. In a novel approach, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles, for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cycles and throughout project developmentsPeer reviewe

Cognitive assisted living ambient system: a survey

The demographic change towards an aging population is creating a significant impact and introducing drastic challenges to our society. We therefore need to find ways to assist older people to stay independently and prevent social isolation of these population. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide various solutions to help older adults to improve their quality of life, stay healthier, and live independently for a time. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is a field to investigate innovative technologies to provide assistance as well as healthcare and rehabilitation to impaired seniors. The paper provides a review of research background and technologies of AAL

Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges

High value and long life products require continuous maintenance throughout their life cycle to achieve required performance with optimum through-life cost. This paper presents foundations and technologies required to offer the maintenance service. Component and system level degradation science, assessment and modelling along with life cycle ‘big data’ analytics are the two most important knowledge and skill base required for the continuous maintenance. Advanced computing and visualisation technologies will improve efficiency of the maintenance and reduce through-life cost of the product. Future of continuous maintenance within the Industry 4.0 context also identifies the role of IoT, standards and cyber security