An Ambient Assisted Living Approach in Designing Domiciliary Services Combined With Innovative Technologies for Patients With Alzheimer’s Disease: A Case Study

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most disabling diseases to affect large numbers of elderly people worldwide. Because of the characteristics of this disease, patients with AD require daily assistance from service providers both in nursing homes and at home. Domiciliary assistance has been demonstrated to be cost effective and efficient in the first phase of the disease, helping to slow down the course of the illness, improve the quality of life and care, and extend independence for patients and caregivers. In this context, the aim of this work is to demonstrate the technical effectiveness and acceptability of an innovative domiciliary smart sensor system for providing domiciliary assistance to patients with AD which has been developed with an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) approach. Methods: The design, development, testing, and evaluation of the innovative technological solution were performed by a multidisciplinary team. In all, 15 sociomedical operators and 14 patients with AD were directly involved in defining the endusers’ needs and requirements, identifying design principles with acceptability and usability features and evaluating the technological solutions before and after the real experimentation. Results: A modular technological system was produced to help caregivers continuously monitor the health status, safety, and daily activities of patients with AD. During the experimentation, the acceptability, utility, usability, and efficacy of this system were evaluated as quite positive. Conclusion: The experience described in this article demonstrated that AAL technologies are feasible and effective nowadays and can be actively used in assisting patients with AD in their homes. The extensive involvement of caregivers in the experimentation allowed to assess that there is, through the use of the technological system, a proven improvement in care performance and efficiency of care provision by both formal and informal caregivers and consequently an increase in the quality of life of patients, their relatives, and their caregivers

Experimental Analysis of RSSI-based Indoor Location Systems with WL Circularly Polarized Antennas

Circularly polarized antennas are used in 2.4 GHz ZigBee radio modules to evaluate performance improvement of RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) based location techniques, with respect to conventional linearly polarized antennas. Experimental RSSI measurements in an indoor environment clearly show that multipath fading is significantly reduced when CP antennas are used; this determines a more reliable estimation of the field amplitude decay law as a function of the distance of the mobile node from the fixed access point, and then a higher location accuracy. At the best of authors' knowledge, it is the first time that the circular polarization features are applied to RSSI-based radio location techniques

Multidisciplinary approach for developing a new robotic system for domiciliary assistance to elderly people

This paper aims to show the effectiveness of a (inter / multi)disciplinary team, based on the technology developers, elderly care organizations, and designers, in developing the ASTRO robotic system for domiciliary assistance to elderly people. The main issues presented in this work concern the improvement of robot’s behavior by means of a smart sensor network able to share information with the robot for localization and navigation, and the design of the robot’s appearance and functionalities by means of a substantial analysis of users’ requirements and attitude to robotic technology to improve acceptability and usability

On the design, development and experimentation of the ASTRO assistive robot integrated in smart environments

This paper presents the full experience of designing, developing and testing ASTROMOBILE, a system composed of an enhanced robotic platform integrated in an Ambient Intelligent (AmI) infrastructure that was conceived to provide favourable independent living, improved quality of life and efficiency of care for senior citizens. The design and implementation of ASTRO robot was sustained by a multidisciplinary team in which technology developers, designers and end-user representatives collaborated using a user-centred design approach. The key point of this work is to demonstrate the general feasibility and scientific/technical effectiveness of a mobile robotic platform integrated in a smart environment and conceived to provide useful services to humans and in particular to elderly people in domestic environments. The main aspects faced in this paper are related to the design of the ASTRO’s appearance and functionalities by means of a substantial analysis of users’ requirements, the improvement of the ASTRO’s behaviour by means of a smart sensor network able to share information with the robot (Ubiquitous Robotics) and the development of advanced human robot interfaces based on natural language

Ambient Assisted Living and Ageing: Preliminary Results of RITA Project

The ageing of population is a social phenomenon that most of worldwide countries are facing. They are, and will be even more in the future, indeed trying to find solutions for improving quality of life of their elderly citizens. The project RITA wants to demonstrate that an update of the current socio-medical services with an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) approach could improve the service efficiency and the quality of life of both elderly and caregiver. This paper presents the preliminary results obtained in RITA

Preliminary Findings of the AALIANCE2 Ambient Assisted Living Roadmap

The AALIANCE2 Project, funded by the European Commission’s ICT Programme within the 7th Framework Programme, aims at identifying the research priorities in the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) field in Europe and worldwide for the next decades. One of the main objectives of this Project is the development of an AAL Roadmap and Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) that, starting from the needs of the elderly and caregivers, describes the possible next generation of AAL service scenarios, the necessary key enabling technologies (KETs) and the technological, legal and economic requirements necessary for the implementation of the proposed AAL systems. Some of these new AAL scenarios show how technologies, such as robotics and ICT solutions, could be used in senior citizens’ daily life activities to maintain their independence and to stay healthy and active in society. At the same time, other scenarios propose new approaches and solutions for caregivers to efficiently support old persons and optimize their work. The Roadmap and the Strategic Research Agenda finally present the future technological challenges to developing the proposed service solutions. This paper provides a short overview of the preliminary version of the AALIANCE2 Roadmap