HANDY: A Configurable Gesture Recognition System

Abstract—With the growing usage of computer systems in daily life, a natural and intuitive Human Computer Interaction (HCI) method to support the embedding of computer systems in our environment seems necessary. Gestures are of utmost importance for the design of natural user interfaces. Hand gesture recog-nition to extract meaningful expressions from the human hand movements and postures is being used for different applications. However, the recognition of hand gestures that contain different hand poses can be challenging. In this paper, we propose a system (called HANDY) for hand gesture recognition that is flexible to be trained to recognize a variety of user-defined gestures defined as sequences of static hand postures. The system has been designed to be used in uncontrolled environments, to handle dynamic and cluttered backgrounds, and without the need of using any wearable sensor or any specific clothing. Evaluation results show a good average accuracy in gesture recognition. Keywords-interactive systems; gesture-based interface; natural HCI; personalizable system I

ICT-Enabled Communication Tools for the Elderly:

Elderly population is growing all over the globe. Social life (social contact, social support, social participation) and communication are important factors for ageing well. Research has shown the potential benefit of ICT-enabled communication tools and social networks for the elderly. The number of elderly people appearing on social networks is increasing. However, not all the available tools are effective for the elderly users. In this chapter, authors propose a communication model for the elderly. Focusing mainly on the locality of the users, a social communication tool for the elderly is proposed which is built around six main features: proximity, proactivity, less content more contact, visual map-based interface, gamification of support, and personal assistant

Mixed Technical and Market Evaluation of Home Automation Netowork for AAL Solutions.

The demographics are experiencing an elderly population growth. One of the main concerns, due to this growth, is the cost of elderly care which is rapidly rising. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) has been proposed as a solution for independent ageing in place, reducing the care costs and improving the quality of life of the elderly. Alongside with the benefits like tele-care, health monitoring, and assistance in activities of daily living, ambient intelligence in smart homes offers another important service which is home control. The right choice of the home automation (HA) technology is crucial for an effective home control. This is challenging in a dynamic and competitive HA market with several standards and alliances. A long-term investment on an HA solution requires not only technical evaluation but also a market evaluation of existing technologies and an understanding of how it will be shaped in future. In this work we searched for mixed technical and market indicators in order to evaluate HA technologies and base our smart home platform on it

Towards a Hand-Based Gestural Language for Smart-Home Control Using Hand Shapes and Dynamic Hand Movements

The application of gestural application can vary a lot: from a simple pointing mechanism to a visual sign language. Application of gestural interaction as a sign language with a proper formalism to interact with the technology has not been studied much. In this work, we present our Kinect-based gesture recognition system that is able to recognize personalized hand shapes and dynamic hand movements. We then describe how we created a “language” for smart-home control based on a specific syntax over sequences of hand shapes and hand movements

BRIDGeViz: Towards an Interactive Data Visualization Tool for Exploration of Indoor Daily Life of an Older Adult

Interactive data visualization could be beneficial to gain insight into the data concerning the inhabitant and the environment collected by an ambient assisted living system. In this paper we present BRIDGeViz that is a web-based interactive visualization tool for the BRIDGe AAL system. It is an effort to help caregivers, the main target users, to explore the daily life dynamics of the inhabitant in order to detect life trends, deviation from daily norms, and search for potential causes of a problem. BRIDGeViz provides two main views and visualizations: the overview visualization for a holistic view of long-term data and the detailed view for a day-level detailed exploration. The visualizations are enriched by interaction mechanisms and some analytic support such as searching for similar days. We also conducted a user study with a demo version of our tool with a positive overall feedback

Elderly Monitoring and AAL for Independent Living at Home:

The population ageing is inevitably going to change the society and the elderly living dynamics. Optimization of resources, independent living and enhancement of elderly’s social, working, and physical activities are the key aspects of this changing. The current paradigm is Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), where the elderly person is enabled to live an independent and high-quality life by empowering the ambient around him/her. Home Automation can provide a two-way contribution: it represents an opportunity to help overcoming difficulties; while its pervasive instrumentation provides precious information. Being aware of the elderly's activities has several applications: for the families, reassuring them about their beloved’s safety, for the caregivers, enabling them to provide prompt interventions. To highlight this aspect, it is possible to refer to AAML: Ambient Assisted and Monitored Living. This chapter introduces the design procedure of AAML systems, and their main challenges: user's needs centrality, data visualization and dependability