Michela Aquilano

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.

A first step toward a pervasive and smart ZigBee sensor system for assistance and rehabilitation

This paper shows the general concept and the primary implementation of a pervasive intelligent system for rehabilitation. The scope of this work is to highlight the possibility to join two important research fields, i.e. rehabilitation and ambient assisted living, to enhance the capabilities and independence of disable and aged people. The described system was composed of a ZigBee network, with coordinator, sensor and actuator nodes, able to identify and control patients activities and send warning to caregiver if requests in warning functionality, and of a software interface to manage the whole network and to monitor patient in outdoor environment.

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.

Improving Domiciliary Robotic Services by Integrating the ASTRO Robot in an AmI Infrastructure

This work describes the ECHORD Experiment ASTROMOBILE, a project aimed to design, develop and test a system for favourable independent living, improved quality of life and efficiency of care for senior citizens in domestic environments. The system, composed of a mobile robotic platform (called ASTRO) and an Ambient Intelligent Infrastructure that actively cooperated between them and with the end-user, was designed and implemented with a user-centred design approach, involving different stakeholders. The system was designed to deliver services to users, like drug delivery, stand support, reminding, info-entertainment. The design took advantages of the integration of robotic platforms with smart environments, to provide to users higher quality and localization based services. Senior end-users were involved in the experimentation of the system in the DomoCasa Living Lab and feedbacks were gathered for the technology assessment. Particularly, this paper demonstrates the general feasibility of the ASTROMOBILE system and thanks to users feedbacks its acceptability and usability.

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 end-users’ 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 WLAN 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.

RITA Project: An Ambient Assisted Living Solution for Independent and Safely Living of Aging Population

This paper presents the work carried out during the RITA Project, a study that focused on designing and implementing Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) services in the real context of Province of Pisa (Tuscany, Italy). The main objective of the RITA Project was to demonstrate the efficiency and the feasibility of new socio-medical services based on AAL approach. The user target of this project were elderly persons of Pisa area, living mainly alone or with a partner at their home, and their formal and informal caregivers. According to their needs new services and ICT system were developed and tested in order to improve the sense of safety of elderly people and caregivers.

Robot Interface Design of Domestic and Condominium Robot for Ageing Population

This chapter presents a preliminary study to design a couple of robots, conceived to assist senior citizens 65+ in domestic and public space. The design and development of these two robots, named Domestic and Condominium, concerned, from one hand, appropriate criteria of acceptability, usability, aesthetic and safety, and on the other hand specific functionalities to satisfy users’ needs.