Laura Raffaeli

Interoperability issues among smart home technological frameworks

Population aging may be seen both as a human success story, the triumph of public health, medical advancements and economic development over diseases and injures, and as one of the most challenging phenomena that society faces in this century. Assistive technology in all its possible implementations (from Telemedicine to Ambient Assisted Living, and Ambient Intelligence) represents an emerging answer to the needs of the new generation of older adults whose desire is to live longer with a higher quality of life. Objective of this paper is to present the results of a public financed action for the development and implementation of an “integration platform” for Ambient Assisted Living that includes features of home automation (energy management, safety, comfort, etc.) and introduces “smart objects”, to monitor activities of daily living and detect any abnormal behavior that may represent a danger, or highlight symptoms of some incipient disease.

Smart TV based ecosystem for personal e-health services

Continuous research in the e-health field aims to develop an increasing number of services targeted to patients, and featuring low costs, high quality and efficiency, personalization and user-control. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supports ubiquitous healthcare services: in particular, the solution herein proposed focuses on the availability of remote health services at home, designed for independent-living patients and elderly, or people in particular conditions, that may benefit from accessing and managing health services from home. The employment of a friendly and easy-to-use consumer electronic device as the smart TV to interface the system, is chosen to limit costs, to promote its usage and spread, but also to address the usability needs of elderly, and other users not familiar with personal computers, or other portable devices. The paper presents the design and implementation of a solution that offers a set of e-health services. The idea is to create a unique interface towards both a cloud-based remote service for the consultation of medical reports, provided by the regional Public Administration, and a personal local service that allows to collect and display data from biomedical devices, and to manage users reminders for medicines.

Multimodal Interaction in a Elderly-Friendly Smart Home: A Case Study

This paper discusses different and multimodal user-system interfaces proposed in the framework of a smart home designed to support the independent living of elderly and frail users. It is shown how different technologies and solutions may be complemented and integrated to provide effective interaction both for routine activities of daily living and anomalous situations.

Data Management in Ambient Assisted Living Platforms Approaching IoT: A Case Study

The adoption of the Internet of Things paradigm in Ambient Assisted Living platforms requires the investigation and analysis of issues related to data collection and processing. In fact, the peculiarities of Ambient Assisted Living services and applications pose specific requirements on the way data originated from sensors should be processed (locally or remotely), delivered (as raw data, or in aggregated fashion), and, of course, how they should be shared or protected. This paper analyses the issues related to data management starting from a review of the state of the art, in order to draw general trends or widespread approaches, that are then discussed and evaluated with respect to a practical implementation presented as a case study.

Comparison of RGB-D Mapping Solutions for Application to Food Intake Monitoring

Food intake behaviours are strictly correlated to health, especially for elderly people. Dietary habits monitoring is one of the most challenging activity for researchers in AAL scenario. RGB-D sensors, such as Kinect, provide multiple useful data to perform behavioural analysis in an unobtrusive way. Unfortunately, when using the Kinect sensor, depth and RGB data are not available with the same point of view, and a mapping algorithm is required in order to associate a 3D point to the same pixel in both the RGB and depth frames. In this paper, some techniques for RGB-D mapping of Kinect sensor data are compared, and a proposed implementation is described. Some experimental results in specific conditions are finally provided.

A simple object for elderly vitality monitoring: The smart insole

In the framework of Ambient Assisted Living solutions, it is very important to monitor the degree of vitality of elderly users in their daily activities, for example to evaluate if the user is spending too much time in a static condition, or not. In fact this could denote an anomalous trend, possibly related to cognitive or physical conditions worsening. For such a kind of monitoring to be effective, the sensor technology shall be the less intrusive as possible, and not require any specific action by the user. To this aim, the paper presents a smart insole equipped with force sensors, that is able to classify different dynamic states (sitting, walking, standing,...) and transmit related data to a supervising system. Preliminary experimental results show the feasibility of the approach, and the effectiveness of the insole in correctly detecting and classifying the users activities.

MQTT in AAL systems for home monitoring of people with dementia

The paradigmatic shift brought by the Internet of Things has already revolutionized many key sectors, like environmental monitoring, grid and energy management, manufacturing, and it can be seen as a promising solution to address challenging societal issues, like the ability to provide significant enhancement to quality of life for the elderly and, in general, people in need. As a consequence, Internet of Things emerges also as the possible next evolution for the Ambient Assisted Living domain. One major issue to address in this context is the identification of a suitable middleware able to leverage the potentialities offered by the Internet of Things and, at the same time, ensure the necessary support to services and functions related to healthcare and personal assistance. This paper provides an overview of middleware solutions designed for Internet of Things in health and wellness domains, and presents a case study related to assistive technology for the home monitoring of people with dementia. It is illustrated how a specific middleware designed for telemetry applications, the MQTT, can be effectively applied in assistive scenarios too, with different architectural options and communication technologies.

Interoperability in IoT infrastructures for enhanced living environments

The concept of Internet of Things is being applied in several areas and involves a dramatically increasing number of market sectors. There is a large variety of commercial products, and the competition between different vendors often causes incompatibility among the available solutions. Due to the lack of a reference standard, in the highly fragmented arena of Ambient Assisted Living systems and Smart Home environments, the support to interoperability is recognized as a key requirement for the deployment of successful products. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review of IoT adoption in the field of Ambient Assisted Living systems and Smart Home environments, by describing the most widespread solutions and their main key points, with a specific focus on the features designed to support interoperability. This is currently a matter of interest at a European level, as demonstrated, for example, by the inclusion of interoperability among the requirements that project proposals have to fulfill to be eligible for funding through the AAL Joint Platform calls published in the last years.

Chapter 4 – The Human Factor in the Design of Successful Ambient Assisted Living Technologies

The increasing incidence of ageing population in modern societies challenges the ability of families, states and communities to sustain new emerging needs. Assistive devices can help older people to maintain their ability in performing activities of daily living and, therefore, their independence. However, despite the huge public and private investments and efforts in research and development, the so-called silver market has not been able to grow at the expected pace: many barriers stand in the way leading from prototypes to products, especially when the target is an inhomogeneous group, as elderly people, and an explicit understanding of users, their needs, expectations and limitations, is not accounted for during the design process. This Chapter discusses the basic role of the human centric approach in the design of assistive technologies, and, by analyzing the outcomes of previous experiences, provides a set of guidelines that can help transforming a disruptive prototype into a successful product.

A cloud-based solution for public administrations: The experience of the Regione Marche

Cloud computing is perceived as the next wave of ICT, and many real experiences are on the commercial scene. However this kind of architecture has open legal issues which makes it an endeavor for Public Administrations, despite its potential impact on the efficiency, effectiveness and transparency of administrative initiatives. In the present paper we present the experience made in the deployment of a Cloud solution in the Regione Marche Local Public Administration, which represents one of the pilot experiences at Nationallevel.