Towards an intelligent and supportive environment for people with physical or cognitive restrictions

AmbienNet environment has been developed with the aim of demonstrating the feasibility of accessible intelligent environments designed to support people with disabilities and older persons living independently. Its main purpose is to examine in depth the advantages and disadvantages of pervasive supporting systems based on the paradigm of Ambient Intelligence for people with sensory, physical or cognitive limitations. Hence diverse supporting technologies and applications have been designed in order to test their accessibility, ease of use and validity. This paper presents the architecture of AmbienNet intelligent environment and an intelligent application to support indoors navigation for smart wheelchairs designed for validation purposes.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2006-15617-C[01,02,03

Designing an adaptive salutogenic care environment

Humans are profoundly affected by the surroundings which they inhabit. Environmental psychologists have produced numerous credible theories describing optimal human environments, based on the concept of congruence or “fit” (1, 2). Lack of person/environment fit can lead to stress-related illness and lack of psychosocial well-being (3). Conversely, appropriately designed environments can promote wellness (4) or “salutogenesis” (5). Increasingly, research in the area of Evidence-Based Design, largely concentrated in the area of healthcare architecture, has tended to bear out these theories (6). Patients and long-term care residents, because of injury, illness or physical/ cognitive impairment, are less likely to be able to intervene to modify their immediate environment, unless this is designed specifically to facilitate their particular needs. In the context of care settings, detailed design of personal space therefore takes on enormous significance. MyRoom conceptualises a personalisable room, utilising sensoring and networked computing to enable the environment to respond directly and continuously to the occupant. Bio-signals collected and relayed to the system will actuate application(s) intended to positively influence user well-being. Drawing on the evidence base in relation to therapeutic design interventions (7), real-time changes in ambient lighting, colour, image, etc. respond continuously to the user’s physiological state, optimising congruence. Based on research evidence, consideration is also given to development of an application which uses natural images (8). It is envisaged that actuation will require machine-learning based on interpretation of data gathered by sensors; sensoring arrangements may vary depending on context and end-user. Such interventions aim to reduce inappropriate stress/ provide stimulation, supporting both instrumental and cognitive tasks

Why Are People's Decisions Sometimes Worse with Computer Support?

In many applications of computerised decision support, a recognised source of undesired outcomes is operators' apparent over-reliance on automation. For instance, an operator may fail to react to a potentially dangerous situation because a computer fails to generate an alarm. However, the very use of terms like "over-reliance" betrays possible misunderstandings of these phenomena and their causes, which may lead to ineffective corrective action (e.g. training or procedures that do not counteract all the causes of the apparently "over-reliant" behaviour). We review relevant literature in the area of "automation bias" and describe the diverse mechanisms that may be involved in human errors when using computer support. We discuss these mechanisms, with reference to errors of omission when using "alerting systems", with the help of examples of novel counterintuitive findings we obtained from a case study in a health care application, as well as other examples from the literature

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

Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Human-Computer Interaction in Mobile Context : A Cognitive Resources Perspective

Human-computer interaction is currently shifting its focus from desktop-based interaction to interaction with "beyond the desktop", which is embedded into everyday activities. In order to support users more elegantly, these mobile, wearable, and ubiquitous computing devices are envisioned to adapt inte lligently to their context. Thus far, however, the mobile use contexts per se have received attention, as most research has been technology-driven. Drawing from cognitive psychology, user modeling in human-computer interaction, and ethnomethodology, a framework is put forward here to analyse mobile use situations from the point of view of resource competition. The framework assumes that mobility is inherently multitasking and easily leads to competition for cognitive and other human resources. This "cognitive resource competition" framework is elaborated and associated with the psychological principles of capacity and multitasking. It looks at the typical social, interactional, cognitive, and physical tasks in mobility, relates them to the typical cognitive resources they compete for, and, based on known capacities of cognitive faculties, pinpoints restrictions and resources for action that can emerge in a given mobile situation. It is argued that the approach is useful for identifying the perceptual, attentional, and cognitive capabilities of a user in a mobile situation. The approach has implications for the design and innovation of intelligent, context-sensitive user interfaces and services. Furthermore, a practical method for making human resources visible in a design session is proposed and evaluated

Location-based and contextual mobile learning. A STELLAR Small-Scale Study

This study starts from several inputs that the partners have collected from previous and current running research projects and a workshop organised at the STELLAR Alpine Rendevous 2010. In the study, several steps have been taken, firstly a literature review and analysis of existing systems; secondly, mobile learning experts have been involved in a concept mapping study to identify the main challenges that can be solved via mobile learning; and thirdly, an identification of educational patterns based on these examples has been done. Out of this study the partners aim to develop an educational framework for contextual learning as a unifying approach in the field. Therefore one of our central research questions is: how can we investigate, theorise, model and support contextual learning

A hierarchy of wants : towards an integrative framework for counselling, psychotherapy and social change

The aim of this monograph is to develop an integrated framework for understanding, and facilitating, psychological and social wellbeing. It is based on the assumption that our wants are a core element of our being; and that the pursuit, and attainment, of these is a defining characteristic of psychological health. It is suggested that our wants can be conceptualised as existing in a hierarchy, in which higher order wants are attained through lower order wants; and that psychological difficulties emerge when our means of attaining our highest order wants are either in conflict with each other (horizontal incoherence), or are ineffective within our present context (vertical incoherence). The monograph argues that this framework can be used to conceptualise, and draw together, a wide range of psychotherapeutic theories and practices; with the therapist construed as a facilitator of more synergetic, and more effective, means of want attainment. In addition, the monograph argues that the extent to which people can progress towards, and attain, their wants may be very dependent on the resources available in their particular life-context, such that improvements in psychological wellbeing may require social and political change. To understand how this might happen, it is argued that the present framework can be transposed to the interpersonal plane, with increased synergies in the ways that people strive to attain their wants leading to a more rewarding and fulfilling socio-political context

The objectness of everyday life: disburdenment or engagement?

The article grew out of a conference paper, ‘The objectness of everyday life: engagement and disburdenment’, Material Geographies, UCL, September 2002. An expanded version of the paper was included in a special themed section of an issue of Geoforum. The paper intervenes into contemporary philosophical scholarship on the nature of use-value, usability, design and ethics. The article has been directly engaged with in an academic journal; Christensen, Carleton B. (2005) ‘The Material Basis of Everyday Rationality: transformation by design or education?’, Design Philosophy Papers No.4,)