Managing multi-user smart environments through BLE based system

Smart and intelligent environment systems will be increasingly important in everyday life. Designing and developing them requires to face some research problems. A properly management of different types of sensors is very challenging but necessary in this area. A new wave of smart devices and systems brings customizable benefits for different users. Example of this are smart-phones, smartbands, smart-watches, smart homes or smart cars. A successful combination of them bring interesting everyday life benefits. One of the most important problems that needs to be solved in a practical way is the so called "multi-users problem". Addressing it is fundamental for moving forward into a successful adoption in everyday life of the smart technologies mentioned before. Associating users and services in a spaces in which there are many possible combination of them, is a core task. This work proposes a novel system based on interactions between Android smart-phones and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology beacons to deal with the challenges of a multi-user smart environment. We process data collected in a smart environment populated by many users. In particular we associate data collected and beacons. This processing generates database log traces containing measurements related to single user activities, helping in better matching services with users

A smart environments architecture (Search)

We report on a system architecture, SEArch, and its associated methods and tools we have been developing, testing and extending for several years through a number of innovation processes in the field of Smart Environments. We have developed these infrastructure in a bottom up fashion directed by the needs of the different projects as opposed to an ideal one which projects have to conform to. In this sense is practical and although necessarily incomplete, it has significant versatility and reasonable efficiency. Projects developed using this architecture have been funded by different companies and funding bodies in Europe. The different components of the architecture are explained through the software supporting those aspects of the system and through the functionality they exhibit in different practical scenarios, extracted from some of the projects implemented with SEArch

Ambient assisted living deployment aims to empower people living with dementia (AnAbEL)

Ambient Assisted Living aims to support the wellbeing of people with special needs by offering assistive solutions. Those systems focused on dementia claim to increase the autonomy of people living with dementia by monitoring their activities. Thus, topics such as Activity Recognition related to dementia and specific solutions such as reminders and tracking users by Global Positioning System offer great advances that seek users' safety and to preserve their healthier lifestyle. However, these solutions address secondary parties by providing useful activities logs or alerts but excluding the main interested user: the person living with dementia. Although primary users are taken into consideration at some design stages by using user-centred design frameworks, final products tend not to fully address the user's needs. This paper presents an Ambient Intelligent system aimed to reduce this limitation by developing a final solution more strongly focused on enhancing a healthy lifestyle by empowering the user's autonomy. Through continued activities monitoring in real-time, the system can provide reminders to the users by coaching them to keep healthy routines. Continuous monitoring also provides a complete user's behaviour tracking and the context-awareness logic used involves the caregivers through alerts when necessary to ensure the user's safety. This article describes the process followed to develop the system aimed to cover the previous concerns and the practical feedback from health professionals over the system deployment working in a real environment