A lightweight framework for transparent cross platform communication of controller data in ambient assisted living environments

Abstract

Elderly support ambient assisted living environments are focal in healthcare computing. Critical to their implementation is transparent integration of diverse hardware and its ubiquitous communication with multiple software components. Modern controllers (Wii family, Microsoft Kinect, Neurosky Mindwave) are especially useful in elderly smart homes, being used, for healthcare monitoring and exercise gaming interventions. Presented herein is a novel Controller Application Communication (CAC) framework for cross device, application independent transmission of controller data to multiple software components. For the first time, a framework supports multiple modern controllers concurrently communicating with multiple, device naïve, requesting applications, utilizing standard, real time, internet communication technologies, as opposed to current practices which focus merely on one device. The framework consists of uniform schemas for encapsulating controllers’ data and of services necessary for communicating these data to the requesting software components. The framework’s architecture is based on distributed computing principles, delegating server duties to use-site gateways for reducing main server load. This framework was utilized in the USEFIL project for simultaneous use of multiple controllers and sensors by different software components of the platform. The framework’s design principles align with the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Future work, enriching this framework, aims to facilitate a more diverse controller set, adhering to an IoT architecture implementation, as well as, allowing on-demand online data streaming, thereby enabling interested parties to test algorithms with data from ecologically valid environments.