Mahmoud Ghorbel

A distributed approach for assistive service provision in pervasive environment

In this paper, we propose assistive service provision architecture in pervasive environments. This architecture is based on a distributed approach and ensures service design, deployment and discovery aspects. In order to perform those aspects, several constraints are supported by this architecture such as the context of the pervasive environment, the user profile and the terminal profile. Delivered services are dedicated to dependent people (elderly and people with disabilities). Our strategy is based on our previous work on smart home for people with disabilities. We also present the OSGi-based implementation of our architecture. This implementation is a first step to experiment and validate our approach. We are aiming at having evaluations in real conditions The rapid development of information and communication technologies is opening a large variety of new services and aids not only for valid people, but also for dependent people due to physical/cognitive restriction or the elderly. Combining technical aids and mobile technology allows those people to benefit from an independent living in both usual and temporary living environments.

Networking and communication in smart home for people with disabilities

People with disabilities need several assistive technical aids to increase their autonomy and perform daily living tasks. This paper describes the role of networking and communication in the smart home concept which allows people with disabilities and elderly people to retain a certain level of independence within their daily environment, such as at home, work, school, outside and so on. The purpose of our research activity is to explore the difficulties by determining the most suitable approach to federate the different communication protocols available indoor and outdoor environments. In this paper we are presenting our main concept in the design of the smart home architecture. We also describe our approach to design an open software environment adapted to people with disabilities. This approach is based on the service discovery protocol UPnP (Universal Plan and Play) to discover devices in smart home. It is based also on wireless technologies and protocols (Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.) to enhance mobility and dependency. Some solutions are adapted to favor integration of new modules and devices, and to improve the communication between the different layers of our software architecture.

Privacy control in the cloud based on multilevel policy enforcement

The cloud computing paradigm is revolutionizing the delivery of information services as it offers several advantages in terms of cost reduction, time-to-market and flexibility. However, such flexibility raises many concerns related to security and privacy which are strong obstacles for the large adoption of the cloud by users who have to delegate too much control to the cloud provider. In this paper, we propose a new privacy control approach notably based on multilevel privacy policies bound to user data and enforced in the cloud at different levels (application and infrastructure). This approach allows the cloud users to control their data stored, processed and moved in the cloud.

Privacy Data Envelope: Concept and implementation

In this paper, we present a privacy control mechanism called PDE (Privacy Data Envelope) allowing users to protect their privacy sensitive content travelling over social and communication networks. Our solution is based on privacy policies expressed by the user and associated with his content. This approach makes use of a decentralized architecture carried out through a PDE feature that has to be added to the existing application access tools like email clients and web browsers. A prototype has been developed to embody the PDE paradigm and to illustrate a scenario where such envelopes cross the boundaries of enterprise social networks and other communications tools. Preliminary performance evaluations were done helping the understanding of the PDE plug-in behaviors and computation overhead.

Seamless semantic service provisioning mechanism for ambient assisted living

As the current technology and usage trends in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) evolves; more and more services were developed for helping dependent people, especially elderly and people with mild dementia to live independently. These services help them to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADL) easily, safely and in a proper manner. The relevant service is delivered to the user seamlessly through a set of devices. As the user moves around, the devices might also move into a new and sometimes unknown domain. This leads to the need for service discovery and provisioning beyond the current capabilities of Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) or other service platforms. A mechanism for seamless semantic service provisioning using semantic web is further discussed in this paper. The challenge here is to produce a platform that supports not only seamless semantic service provisioning, but also to handle user and device mobility through semantic reasoning. The aim of the system is to ensure users are able to use relevant services at a specific location and time with a set of dynamic context.

Toward a generic human machine interface for assistive robots: the AMOR project

This paper describes the development of generic human-machine interface (HMI) to control the manus assistive robot. The personalization of the HMI, according to each end user, is crucial for the usability of any assistive technology. The control of complex devices, such as robot having many degrees of freedom (DOF), with a limited number of DOF at the level of the user, implies an appropriate design of the HMI to facilitate the interaction. Our research activities focus mainly at this level, which means not only providing several functionalities of the controlled system, but also on the presentation of those functionalities to the user. The challenge is to hide the complexity of any controlled system to the user, and particularly, when these users are having severe disabilities. Preliminary results are also presented. This work is funded by a European program, through the AMOR project, and by national support, through the Smart Home project. A demonstration of the running prototype is presented during the conference.

Integration of home networking in a smart environment dedicated to people with disabilities

We describe our research activity on the integration of technologies in the environment of people with disabilities who have reduced abilities to perform daily living tasks and who are usually using adapted systems, described as assistive technologies, to compensate, even partly, the problems of daily activities. This paper focuses on the process design of an accessible smart environment, described as the smart homes concept. This process design covers our explanation of the use of smart homes technologies as appropriate solutions to support user needs. We focus on the software infrastructure developed within the smart homes project which started two years ago and provides preliminary evaluation results on users needs in term of assistive technologies and highlights the role of communication protocols to control heterogeneous devices. This project 1 is funded by the GET and the LLR foundation.

Secured and Trusted Service Provision in Pervasive Environment

Thanks to pervasive environment, users can remotely have access to various resources and services within their public or private living space. Consequently, several security and privacy issues are raised especially due to the wireless access used to get services and to the privacy aspect that could be involved. To securely deploy these services in multiple smart spaces, we propose a secured service provision mechanisms based on trust relationship between involved actors (service platform and mobile nodes). These mechanisms integrate a service discovery as a preliminary step to build a secured channel between a user (U) and a Service Platform (SP). A trust model is used to interconnect several users with a service platform based on recommendation and trust management.

From Smart Home to Smart Space in Independent Living: A Framework for Multiple Contexts Management

During this last decade we have seen that the most suitable application of smart homes targeted independent living of people with disabilities and elderly people. We have seen the emergence of different smart homes prototype developed by several research projects in Europe, North America and Asia. This concept of smart home in a box, which is mainly technology push driven, have two weak points: at first end-users were generally not involved, not user pull driven, and secondly, the smartness of the living environment was limited to the indoor box, even if some remote access functionalities where designed, as soon as the user leaves the box he loose all of the available smartness. In this paper, we describe our research strategy on how to provide a suitable living environment for dependent people based on a push-pull approach. The idea is to focus on the user and provide him the mean to bring part of the home smartness outside in order to interact with unknown environments, as such the bus/train station, the shopping mall, the hospital, and so on. The goal of this research work is not to develop a product, but mainly to focus on a generic framework for service continuity taking into account the user, the environments, and the mobility aspects within known and unknown environments. The ultimate goal is not only to ensure of a coherent matching between the user requirements and the available services, but also the way to interact that we described as human-environment interaction (HEI).

Multimodal notification framework for elderly and professional in a smart nursing home

This article presents a multimodal notification framework allowing the optimal delivery and handling of multimedia requests and medical alerts in a nursing home. Multimodal notifications are automatically adapted to different criteria such as the device characteristics, capabilities and modalities, the emergency of the situation, the semantics of the notification, the recipient, etc. This framework is operated with various applications (e.g., health alert, medicine reminder, activity proposition) that have been supported by user requirement analysis done nearby an elderly population and healthcare professionals (e.g., nurses, caregivers). An acceptability study was performed to understand the users’ expectations regarding this new technology and modalities. This study was followed by the evaluation of proposed services with different real end-users in a pilot site. Results of these studies presented in this paper highlight the added value of the proposed framework to enhance the quality of life of elderly people as well as the efficiency of the medical staff.