A Domain-Specific Approach To Unifying The Many Dimensions of Context-Aware Home Service Development

The complete proceedings are available at http://www.smart-world.org/2018/uic/conferenceProceedings.phpInternational audienceDeveloping context-aware homes involves a range of stakeholders, addressing many dimensions such as service design and development, infrastructure deployment, and maintenance. Such a variety of dimensions often translate into heterogeneous, low-level, silo-based processing of sensor data to extract context information. This paper analyzes a range of existing data processing layers in the domain of aging in place to identify key concepts and operations specific to context-aware processing. Based on this analysis, we introduce a context-aware, domain-specific language and its software architecture, which allow to put in synergy the stakeholders of a context-aware home by providing them with a unified approach to designing and developing services. Our approach offers context aware-specific abstractions and notations, within a data-centric and data-driven paradigm. We have validated our approach by applying it to an assisted living platform for aging in place, deployed in the home of 129 users. In particular, we used our domain-specific language to re-implement 53 existing services, originating from the stakeholders of the assisted living platform. These services were deployed and successfully tested for their effectiveness in performing the specific tasks of the stakeholders, such as detection of daily activities, user risk situations, or sensor failures

Improving the Reliability of Pervasive Computing Applications By Continuous Checking of Sensor Readings

International audienceThis paper shows that context-aware applications commonly make implicit assumptions about a sensor infrastructure. Because context-awareness critically relies on these assumptions, the developer typically need to ensure their validity by encoding them in the application code, polluting it with non-functional concerns. This defensive programming approach can be avoided by formulating these assumptions aside from the application, thus factorizing them as an explicit model of the sensor infrastructure. This model can be expressed as a set of rules and can be checked automatically and continuously to ensure the reliability of a sensor infrastructure, both at installation time and during normal functioning. The usefulness of our approach is demonstrated in the domain of assisted living for seniors. We applied it to sensor data collected in the context of a 9-month field study of an assisted living platform, deployed at the home of 24 seniors. We show that several kinds of sensor malfunctions could have been identified upon their occurrence, thanks for our continuous checking, and resolved

A Language for Online State Processing of Binary Sensors, Applied to Ambient Assisted Living

International audienceThere is a large variety of binary sensors in use today, and useful context-aware services can be defined using such binary sensors. However, the currently available approaches for programming context-aware services do not conveniently support binary sensors. Indeed, no existing approach simultaneously supports a notion of state, central to binary sensors, offers a complete set of operators to compose states, allows to define reusable abstractions by means of such compositions, and implements efficient online processing of these operators. This paper proposes a new language for event processing specifically targeted to binary sensors. The central contributions of this language are a native notion of state and semi-causal operators for temporal state composition including: Allen's interval relations generalized for handling multiple intervals, and temporal filters for handling delays. Compared to other approaches such as CEP (complex event processing), our language provides less discontinued information, allows less restricted compositions, and supports reusable abstractions. We implemented an interpreter for our language and applied it to successfully rewrite a full set of real Ambient Assisted Living services. The performance of our prototype interpreter is shown to compete well with a commercial CEP engine when expressing the same services

An event-driven approach to developing interdisciplinary services dedicated to aging in place

La notion de contexte est fondamentale dans le champ de l’informatique ubiquitaire. En particulier lorsque des services assistent un utilisateur dans ses activités quotidiennes. Parce qu’elle implique plusieurs disciplines, une maison équipée d’informatique ubiquitaire dédiée au maintien à domicile de personnes âgées demande l’implication d’une variété d’intervenants, tant pour concevoir et développer des services d’assistance, que pour déployer et maintenir l’infrastructure sous-jacente. Cette grande diversité d’intervenants correspond à une diversité de contextes. Ces différents contextes sont généralement étudiés séparément, empêchant toute synergie. Cette thèse présente une méthodologie permettant d’unifier la conception et le développement de services sensibles au contexte et de répondre aux besoins de tout type d’intervenant. Dans un premier temps, nous traitons les besoins des intervenants concernant l’infrastructure de capteurs/actionneurs : installation, maintenance et exploitation. Le modèle d’infrastructure de capteurs et un ensemble de règles en résultant permettent de superviser en continu l’infrastructure et de détecter des dysfonctionnements. Cette supervision simplifie le processus de développement d’applications, en faisant abstraction des problèmes d’infrastructure. Dans un second temps, nous analysons un large éventail de services d’assistance domiciliaire dédié aux personnes âgées, en considérant la variété des besoins des intervenants. Grâce à cette analyse, nous généralisons l’approche de modèle d’infrastructure à tout type de services. Notre méthodologie permet de définir des services de façon unifiée, à travers un langage dédié, appelé Maloya, exprimant des règles manipulant les concepts d’état et d’évènement. Nous avons développé un compilateur de notre langage vers un langage événementiel dont l’exécution s’appuie sur un moteur de traitement d’évènements complexes (CEP). Nous avons validé notre approche en définissant un large éventail de services d’assistance à la personne, à partir de services existants, et concernant l’ensemble des intervenants du domaine. Nous avons compilé et exécuté les services Maloya sur un moteur de traitement d’évènements complexes. Les performances obtenues en terme de latence et d’occupation mémoire sont satisfaisantes pour le domaine et compatible avec une exécution 24 heures sur 24 sur le long terme.The notion of context is fundamental to the field of pervasive computing, and in particular when such services are dedicated to assist a user in his daily activities. Being at the crossroad of various fields, a context-aware home dedicated to aging in place involves a variety of stakeholders to design and develop assistive services, as well as to deploy and maintain the underlying infrastructure. This considerable diversity of stakeholders raises correspondingly diverse context dimensions : each service relies on specific contexts (e.g., sensor status for a maintenance service, fridge usage for a meal activity recognition service). Typically, these contexts are considered separately, preventing any synergy. This dissertation presents a methodology for unifying the design and development of various domestic context-aware services, which addresses the requirements of all the stakeholders. In a first step, we handle the needs of stakeholders concerned by the sensors infrastructure : installers, maintainers and operators. We define an infrastructure model of a home and a set of rules to continuously monitor the sensor infrastructure and raise failure when appropriate. This continuous monitoring simplifies application development by abstracting it from infrastructure concerns. In a second step, we analyze a range of services for aging in place, considering the whole diversity of stakeholders. Based on this analysis, we generalize the approach developed for the infrastructure to all assistive services. Our methodology allows to define unified services, in the form of rules processing events and states. To express such rules, we define a domain-specific design language, named Maloya. We developed a compiler from our langage using as a backend an event processing language, which is executed on a complex event processing (CEP) engine. To validate our approach, we define a wide range of assistive services with our language, which reimplement existing deployed services belonging to all of the stakeholders. These Maloya services were deployed and successfully tested for their effectiveness in performing the specific tasks of the stakeholders. Latency and memory consumption performance turned out to be fully compatible with a 24/7 execution in the long run

Une approche événementielle pour le développement de services multi-métiers dédiés à l’assistance domiciliaire

The notion of context is fundamental to the field of pervasive computing, and in particular when such services are dedicated to assist a user in his daily activities. Being at the crossroad of various fields, a context-aware home dedicated to aging in place involves a variety of stakeholders to design and develop assistive services, as well as to deploy and maintain the underlying infrastructure. This considerable diversity of stakeholders raises correspondingly diverse context dimensions : each service relies on specific contexts (e.g., sensor status for a maintenance service, fridge usage for a meal activity recognition service). Typically, these contexts are considered separately, preventing any synergy. This dissertation presents a methodology for unifying the design and development of various domestic context-aware services, which addresses the requirements of all the stakeholders. In a first step, we handle the needs of stakeholders concerned by the sensors infrastructure : installers, maintainers and operators. We define an infrastructure model of a home and a set of rules to continuously monitor the sensor infrastructure and raise failure when appropriate. This continuous monitoring simplifies application development by abstracting it from infrastructure concerns. In a second step, we analyze a range of services for aging in place, considering the whole diversity of stakeholders. Based on this analysis, we generalize the approach developed for the infrastructure to all assistive services. Our methodology allows to define unified services, in the form of rules processing events and states. To express such rules, we define a domain-specific design language, named Maloya. We developed a compiler from our langage using as a backend an event processing language, which is executed on a complex event processing (CEP) engine. To validate our approach, we define a wide range of assistive services with our language, which reimplement existing deployed services belonging to all of the stakeholders. These Maloya services were deployed and successfully tested for their effectiveness in performing the specific tasks of the stakeholders. Latency and memory consumption performance turned out to be fully compatible with a 24/7 execution in the long run.La notion de contexte est fondamentale dans le champ de l’informatique ubiquitaire. En particulier lorsque des services assistent un utilisateur dans ses activités quotidiennes. Parce qu’elle implique plusieurs disciplines, une maison équipée d’informatique ubiquitaire dédiée au maintien à domicile de personnes âgées demande l’implication d’une variété d’intervenants, tant pour concevoir et développer des services d’assistance, que pour déployer et maintenir l’infrastructure sous-jacente. Cette grande diversité d’intervenants correspond à une diversité de contextes. Ces différents contextes sont généralement étudiés séparément, empêchant toute synergie. Cette thèse présente une méthodologie permettant d’unifier la conception et le développement de services sensibles au contexte et de répondre aux besoins de tout type d’intervenant. Dans un premier temps, nous traitons les besoins des intervenants concernant l’infrastructure de capteurs/actionneurs : installation, maintenance et exploitation. Le modèle d’infrastructure de capteurs et un ensemble de règles en résultant permettent de superviser en continu l’infrastructure et de détecter des dysfonctionnements. Cette supervision simplifie le processus de développement d’applications, en faisant abstraction des problèmes d’infrastructure. Dans un second temps, nous analysons un large éventail de services d’assistance domiciliaire dédié aux personnes âgées, en considérant la variété des besoins des intervenants. Grâce à cette analyse, nous généralisons l’approche de modèle d’infrastructure à tout type de services. Notre méthodologie permet de définir des services de façon unifiée, à travers un langage dédié, appelé Maloya, exprimant des règles manipulant les concepts d’état et d’évènement. Nous avons développé un compilateur de notre langage vers un langage événementiel dont l’exécution s’appuie sur un moteur de traitement d’évènements complexes (CEP). Nous avons validé notre approche en définissant un large éventail de services d’assistance à la personne, à partir de services existants, et concernant l’ensemble des intervenants du domaine. Nous avons compilé et exécuté les services Maloya sur un moteur de traitement d’évènements complexes. Les performances obtenues en terme de latence et d’occupation mémoire sont satisfaisantes pour le domaine et compatible avec une exécution 24 heures sur 24 sur le long terme

Assistive Computing: a Human-Centered Approach to Developing Computing Support for Cognition

International audienceThe growing population of cognitively impaired individuals calls for the emergence of a research area dedicated to developing computing systems that address their needs. The nature of this research area requires to bridge the many disciplines needed to develop human-centered, assistive computing systems. Such bridging may seem unattainable considering the conceptual and practical gaps between the related disciplines and the challenges of propagating human-related concerns throughout the many stages of the development process of assistive technologies. As a consequence, existing assistive technologies lack a proper needs analysis; their development is often driven by technology concerns, resulting in ill-designed and stereotype-biased systems; and, most of them are not tested for their eï¿¿ectiveness in assisting users. In this paper, we propose a systematic exploration of this vast challenge. First, we deï¿¿ne Assistive Computing as a research area and propose key principles to drive its study. Then, we introduce a tool-based methodology dedicated to developing assistive computing support, integrating a range of disciplines from human-related sciences to computer science. This methodology is purposefully pragmatic in that it leverages, aggregates and revisits numerous research results, concretizing it with a range of examples. More generally, our goal is i) to provide a framework to conduct research in the area of Assistive Computing and ii) to identify the necessary bridges between disciplines to account for all the dimensions of such systems