Federico Pecora

GiraffPlus: Combining social interaction and long term monitoring for promoting independent living

Early detection and adaptive support to changing individual needs related to ageing is an important challenge in todays society. In this paper we present a system called GiraffPlus that aims at addressing such a challenge and is developed in an on-going European project. The system consists of a network of home sensors that can be automatically configured to collect data for a range of monitoring services; a semi-autonomous telepresence robot; a sophisticated context recognition system that can give high-level and long term interpretations of the collected data and respond to certain events; and personalized services delivered through adaptive user interfaces for primary users. The system performs a range of services including data collection and analysis of long term trends in behaviors and physiological parameters (e.g. relating to sleep or daily activity); warnings, alarms and reminders; and social interaction through the telepresence robot. The latter is based on the Giraff telepresence robot, which is already in place in a number of homes. A distinctive aspect of the project is that the GiraffPlus system will be installed and evaluated in at least 15 homes of elderly people. This paper provides a general overview of the GiraffPlus system and its evaluation.

DCOP FOR SMART HOMES: A CASE STUDY

The aim of this article is to bring forth the issue of integrating the services provided by intelligent artifacts in Ambient Intelligence applications. Specifically, we propose a Distributed Constraint Optimization procedure for achieving a functional integration of intelligent artifacts in a smart home. To this end, we employ Adopt‐N, a state‐of‐the‐art algorithm for solving Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems (DCOP). This article attempts to state the smart home coordination problem in general terms, and provides the details of a DCOP‐based approach by describing a case study taken from the RoboCare project. More specifically, we show how (1) DCOP is a convenient metaphor for casting smart home coordination problems, and (2) the specific features which distinguish Adopt‐N from other algorithms for DCOP represent a strong asset in the smart home domain.

Development of a Socially Believable Multi-Robot Solution from Town to Home

Abstract Technological advances in the robotic and ICT fields represent an effective solution to address specific societal problems to support ageing and independent life. One of the key factors for these technologies is that they have to be socially acceptable and believable to the end-users. This paper aimed to present some technological aspects that have been faced to develop the Robot-Era system, a multi-robotic system that is able to act in a socially believable way in the environments daily inhabited by humans, such as urban areas, buildings and homes. In particular, this paper focuses on two services—shopping delivery and garbage collection—showing preliminary results on experiments conducted with 35 elderly people. The analysis adopts an end-user-oriented perspective, considering some of the main attributes of acceptability: usability, attitude, anxiety, trust and quality of life.

MONITORING ELDERLY PEOPLE WITH THE ROBOCARE DOMESTIC ENVIRONMENT: INTERACTION SYNTHESIS AND USER EVALUATION

This article describes aspects of a fully implemented artificial intelligence (AI) system that integrates multiple intelligent components to actively assist an elderly person at home. Specifically, we describe how constraint‐based scheduling technology is used to actively monitor a pattern of activities executed by the person and how detected temporal constraint violations are used to trigger meaningful and contextualized proactive interactions. This article also presents a psychological evaluation of the system focusing on elderly peoples attitudes, in which system acceptability, perceived utility, interaction modality, and emotional response are considered.

Towards ambient intelligence for the domestic care of the elderly

In this article we present an integrated system the domestic care of elderly people which is being developed within the RoboCare project. The system is composed of a network of sensors placed in the environment to reconstruct a global situation and a set of robotic and software agents for controlling the environment. Within this framework, the two main components that we describe in this article are: (1) a people and robot localization and tracking system that exploits stereo vision in order to monitor the positions of robots and persons; (2) a supervision framework that is in charge of collecting information about the distributed sensors and monitoring the activities of the assisted person. This article shows how, starting from these two ingredients, we are developing a system prototype for an “intelligent” environment, which acts as a global monitor surveying an assisted elderly person and reacts to the stimuli coming from the environment in order to control its evolution.

Robotic UBIquitous COgnitive Network

Robotic ecologies are networks of heterogeneous robotic devices pervasively embedded in everyday environments, where they cooperate to perform complex tasks. While their potential makes them increasingly popular, one fundamental problem is how to make them self-adaptive, so as to reduce the amount of preparation, pre-programming and human supervision that they require in real world applications. The EU FP7 project RUBICON develops self-sustaining learning solutions yielding cheaper, adaptive and efficient coordination of robotic ecologies. The approach we pursue builds upon a unique combination of methods from cognitive robotics, agent control systems, wireless sensor networks and machine learning. This paper briefly illustrates how these techniques are being extended, integrated, and applied to AAL applications.

Molecular characterisation of six patients with prolidase deficiency: identification of the first small duplication in the prolidase gene and of a mutation generating symptomatic and asymptomatic outcomes within the same family

Prolidase deficiency (PD) is a rare autosomal recessive connective tissue disorder caused by mutations in the prolidase gene. The PD patients show a wide range of clinical outcomes characterised mainly by intractable skin ulcers, mental retardation and recurrent respiratory infections. Here we describe five different PEPD mutations in six European patients. We identified two new PEPD mutant alleles: a 13 bp duplication in exon 8, which is the first reported duplication in the prolidase gene and a point mutation resulting in a change in amino acid E412, a highly conserved residue among different species. The E412K substitution is responsible for the first reported phenotypic variability within a family with severe and asymptomatic outcomes.

When robots are late: Configuration planning for multiple robots with dynamic goals

Unexpected contingencies in robot execution may induce a cascade of effects, especially when multiple robots are involved. In order to effectively adapt to this, robots need the ability to reason along multiple dimensions at execution time. We propose an approach to closed-loop planning capable of generating configuration plans, i.e., action plans for multirobot systems which specify the causal, temporal, resource and information dependencies between individual sensing, computation, and actuation components. The key feature which enables closed loop performance is that configuration plans are represented as constraint networks, which are shared between the planner and the executor and are continuously updated during execution. We report experiments run both in simulation and on real robots, in which a fault in one robot is compensated through different types of plan modifications at run time.

On mission-dependent coordination of multiple vehicles under spatial and temporal constraints

Coordinating multiple autonomous ground vehicles is paramount to many industrial applications. Vehicle trajectories must take into account temporal and spatial requirements, e.g., usage of floor space and deadlines on task execution. In this paper we present an approach to obtain sets of alternative execution patterns (called trajectory envelopes) which satisfy these requirements and are conflict-free. The approach consists of multiple constraint solvers which progressively refine trajectory envelopes according to mission requirements. The approach leverages the notion of least commitment to obtain easily revisable trajectories for execution.

Proactive assistive technology: an empirical study

This paper analyzes the problem of evaluating elderly peoples perception of assistive robots and domotic environments. Specifically, we focus on aspects related to the modalities in which interaction can occur between an elder user and an assistive robotic agent. Our work benefits from the products of project ROBOCARE, namely, a domestic environment in which sensors, intelligent software components and a domestic robot provide a set of cognitive support services for the elder user. This paper analyzes a number of evaluation criteria in detail, specifically related to the robots aspect, the way in which it communicates with the user, and the perceived usefulness of its support services. Among these criteria, the paper proposes and reports an evaluation of the Proactive interaction modality (where the system takes the initiative) and On-demand interaction (in which the user explicitly requests a service). Users evaluate the On-demand support services in personal safety scenarios as particularly useful, and less so in scenarios which are not critical. The paper also provides a discussion which can be useful for the design of future assistive agents and robotic companions.