Smart home technology for aging

The majority of the growing population, in the US and the rest of the world requires some degree of formal and or informal care either due to the loss of function or failing health as a result of aging and most of them suffer from chronic disorders. The cost and burden of caring for elders is steadily increasing. This thesis focuses on providing the analysis of the technologies with which a Smart Home is built to improve the quality of life of the elderly. A great deal of emphasis is given to the sensor technologies that are the back bone of these Smart Homes. In addition to the Analysis of these technologies a survey of commercial sensor products and products in research that are concerned with monitoring the health of the occupants of the Smart Home is presented. A brief analysis on the communication technologies which form the communication infrastructure for the Smart Home is also illustrated. Finally, System Architecture for the Smart Home is proposed describing the functionality and users of the system. The feasibility of the system is also discussed. A scenario measuring the blood glucose level of the occupant in a Smart Home is presented as to support the system architecture presented

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

Progress in ambient assisted systems for independent living by the elderly

One of the challenges of the ageing population in many countries is the efficient delivery of health and care services, which is further complicated by the increase in neurological conditions among the elderly due to rising life expectancy. Personal care of the elderly is of concern to their relatives, in case they are alone in their homes and unforeseen circumstances occur, affecting their wellbeing. The alternative; i.e. care in nursing homes or hospitals is costly and increases further if specialized care is mobilized to patients’ place of residence. Enabling technologies for independent living by the elderly such as the ambient assisted living systems (AALS) are seen as essential to enhancing care in a cost-effective manner. In light of significant advances in telecommunication, computing and sensor miniaturization, as well as the ubiquity of mobile and connected devices embodying the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), end-to-end solutions for ambient assisted living have become a reality. The premise of such applications is the continuous and most often real-time monitoring of the environment and occupant behavior using an event-driven intelligent system, thereby providing a facility for monitoring and assessment, and triggering assistance as and when needed. As a growing area of research, it is essential to investigate the approaches for developing AALS in literature to identify current practices and directions for future research. This paper is, therefore, aimed at a comprehensive and critical review of the frameworks and sensor systems used in various ambient assisted living systems, as well as their objectives and relationships with care and clinical systems. Findings from our work suggest that most frameworks focused on activity monitoring for assessing immediate risks while the opportunities for integrating environmental factors for analytics and decision-making, in particular for the long-term care were often overlooked. The potential for wearable devices and sensors, as well as distributed storage and access (e.g. cloud) are yet to be fully appreciated. There is a distinct lack of strong supporting clinical evidence from the implemented technologies. Socio-cultural aspects such as divergence among groups, acceptability and usability of AALS were also overlooked. Future systems need to look into the issues of privacy and cyber security