The role of ambient intelligent environments for tracking functional decline

We live in a ubiquitous world where we are surrounded by context sensitive information and smart devices that are able to capture information about our surroundings unobtrusively. Making use of such rich information can enable recognition of activities conducted by elderly users, and in turn can allow the possibility of tracking any functional decline. This chapter highlights the current methods for unobtrusively recognising activities of daily living within a home environment for people with physical or cognitive disabilities. A main group for which this is important for are Alzheimer's patients. The chapter also bases the discussion of what makes a successful environment for carrying out accurate activity recognition, which is then followed by a proposed taxonomy of the key characteristics that are required for robust activity recognition within a smart environment, contextualised with real-life scenarios