Ambient Assisted Living Technologies Research Articles

Experience in evaluating AAL solutions in living labs.

Ambient assisted living (AAL) is a complex field, where different technologies are integrated to offer solutions for the benefit of different stakeholders. Several evaluation techniques are commonly applied that tackle specific aspects of AAL; however, holistic evaluation approaches are lacking when addressing the needs of both developers and end-users. Living labs have been often used as real-life test and experimentation environments for co-designing AAL technologies and validating them with relevant stakeholders. During the last five years, we have been evaluating AAL systems and services in the framework of various research projects. This paper presents the lessons learned in this experience and proposes a set of harmonized guidelines to conduct evaluations in living labs.

Language model applications to spelling with Brain-Computer Interfaces.

Within the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) community, Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) have raised great hopes as they provide alternative communication means for persons with disabilities bypassing the need for speech and other motor activities. Although significant advancements have been realized in the last decade, applications of language models (e.g., word prediction, completion) have only recently started to appear in BCI systems. The main goal of this article is to review the language model applications that supplement non-invasive BCI-based communication systems by discussing their potential and limitations, and to discern future trends. First, a brief overview of the most prominent BCI spelling systems is given, followed by an in-depth discussion of the language models applied to them. These language models are classified according to their functionality in the context of BCI-based spelling: the static/dynamic nature of the user interface, the use of error correction and predictive spelling, and the potential to improve their classification performance by using language models. To conclude, the review offers an overview of the advantages and challenges when implementing language models in BCI-based communication systems when implemented in conjunction with other AAL technologies.

Automated Generation of Models of Activities of Daily Living

In order to increase the safety of autonomous elderly people in their home, Ambient Assisted Living technologies are currently emerging. Namely, the recognition of their activities might be a way to detect eventual health problems, and can be performed in a Smarthome equipped with binary sensors. Hence, this communication aims at providing means to automatically generate a formal model of the Activities of Daily Living. A data mining approach in order to discover frequent habits of the observed inhabitant from a database of sequences of sensor events is proposed. Those frequent habits are then formally modelled using finite automata, leading to the construction of a map of habits mirroring the behaviour of the inhabitant. Such a model could then be used for online identification of habits, and even predictions of the upcoming behaviour. Results obtained on a case study are also presented.

Usability, accessibility and ambient-assisted living: a systematic literature review

Ambient-assisted living (AAL) is, nowadays, an important research and development area, foreseen as an important instrument to face the demographic aging. The acceptance of the AAL paradigm is closely related to the quality of the available systems, namely in terms of intelligent functions for the user interaction. In that context, usability and accessibility are crucial issues to consider. This paper presents a systematic literature review of AAL technologies, products and services with the objective of establishing the current position regarding user interaction and how are end users involved in the AAL development and evaluation processes. For this purpose, a systematic review of the literature on AAL was undertaken. A total of 1,048 articles were analyzed, 111 of which were mainly related to user interaction and 132 of which described practical AAL systems applied in a specified context and with a well-defined aim. Those articles classified as user interaction and systems were further characterized in terms of objectives, target users, users' involvement, usability and accessibility issues, settings to be applied, technologies used and development stages. The results show the need to improve the integration and interoperability of the existing technologies and to promote user-centric developments with a strong involvement of end users, namely in what concerns usability and accessibility issues.

Deployment of assistive living technology in a nursing home environment: methods and lessons learned.

BackgroundWith an ever-growing ageing population, dementia is fast becoming the chronic disease of the 21st century. Elderly people affected with dementia progressively lose their autonomy as they encounter problems in their Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). Hence, they need supervision and assistance from their family members or professional caregivers, which can often lead to underestimated psychological and financial stress for all parties. The use of Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) technologies aims to empower people with dementia and relieve the burden of their caregivers.The aim of this paper is to present the approach we have adopted to develop and deploy a system for ambient assistive living in an operating nursing home, and evaluate its performance and usability in real conditions. Based on this approach, we emphasise on the importance of deployments in real world settings as opposed to prototype testing in laboratories.MethodsWe chose to conduct this work in close partnership with end-users (dementia patients) and specialists in dementia care (professional caregivers). Our trial was conducted during a period of 14 months within three rooms in a nursing home in Singapore, and with the participation of eight dementia patients and two caregivers. A technical ambient assistive living solution, consisting of a set of sensors and devices controlled by a software platform, was deployed in the collaborating nursing home. The trial was preceded by a pre-deployment period to organise several observation sessions with dementia patients and focus group discussions with professional caregivers. A process of ground truth and system’s log data gathering was also planned prior to the trial and a system performance evaluation was realised during the deployment period with the help of caregivers. An ethical approval was obtained prior to real life deployment of our solution.ResultsPatients’ observations and discussions allowed us to gather a set of requirements that a system for elders with mild-dementia should fulfil. In fact, our deployment has exposed more concrete requirements and problems that need to be addressed, and which cannot be identified in laboratory testing. Issues that were neither forecasted during the design phase nor during the laboratory testing surfaced during deployment, thus affecting the effectiveness of the proposed solution. Results of the system performance evaluation show the evolution of system precision and uptime over the deployment phases, while data analysis demonstrates the ability to provide early detection of the degradation of patients’ conditions. A qualitative feedback was collected from caregivers and doctors and a set of lessons learned emerged from this deployment experience. (Continued on next page) (Continued from previous page)ConclusionLessons learned from this study were very useful for our research work and can serve as inspiration for developers and providers of assistive living services. They confirmed the importance of real deployment to evaluate assistive solutions especially with the involvement of professional caregivers. They also asserted the need for larger deployments. Larger deployments will allow to conduct surveys on assistive solutions social and health impact, even though they are time and manpower consuming during their first phases.

Expected Reliability of Everyday- and Ambient Assisted Living Technologies

To receive valuable information about expected reliability in everyday technologies compared to Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies, an online survey was conducted including five everyday (train, dishwasher, navigation system, computer, mobile phone) and three AAL (stove, window, floor sensors) technologies. The age range of the 206 participants (109 men; 97 female) was from 14 to 88 years (mean=38.0). The descriptive analysis indicates expected reliabilities of more than 90% for most technologies. Only train punctuality is considered as less reliable with a mean expected reliability of 86%. Furthermore, by using t-tests it can be shown that the three AAL technologies are expected to have a higher reliability than the everyday technologies. Additionally, a sample split at the age of 50 years indicates that elderly participants expect that technologies have a higher reliability than younger participants do. Using these findings, in a next step an experiment with different reliability levels of AAL technologies will be designed. This differentiation will be used to measure the influence of reliability on trust and intention to use in context of Ambient Assisted Living.

Special theme: ambient assisted living for mobility: safety, well-being and inclusion

The ageing of the population worldwide is one of the major social and economic issues facing modern society. With age, the risk of frailty increases, including dementia and reduced mobility, and with it, functional dependence to perform activities of daily living. Ambient assisted living (AAL) aims at seamlessly integrating information and communication technologies (ICT) within homes and residences to increase the quality of life and autonomy of older adults. This special issue focuses on developments in AAL to address mobility challenges among frail older adults, due to physical and cognitive impairments. Among these challenges are an increase risk of falls, inability to independently perform daily activities and difficulties navigating the environment. Ambient technologies can assist automatically detecting falls or relevant activities performed by the older adult, providing augmented cues to assist in mobility and motivating older adults to remain active and autonomous. Ten papers have been selected to be included in this special issue. The first two papers deal directly with the problem of frailty and the risk of falls. The paper by Planinc and Kampel entitled ‘Introducing the use of path data for fall detection’ presents an approach based on a depth sensor to detect falls, which are becoming pervasive as their cost decreases. The approach is compared to the use of audio and 2D video exhibiting better performance. In ‘Elderly frailty detection by using accelerometerenabled smartphones and clinical information record’, Fontecha et al. describe the use of accelerometer data captured by a mobile phone for gait analysis and frailty estimation. The approach was evaluated with 15 elders, and they identified the strong and weak points of the approach to be used for the design of future systems. The next two papers are closely related with the former: an important aspect of AAL technologies aimed at assisting in activities of daily living is the recognition of the activity being performed by the user. In ‘Activity Recognition with Hand-worn Magnetic Sensors’, Maekawa et al. propose the use of magnetic sensors worn in the hand to detect the presence of electrical devices and infer the activity performed by the user. The evaluation performed with real data sets achieved high accuracies even with a small number of sensors. Bravo et al. present in ‘RFID breadcrumbs for enhanced care data management and dissemination’ an approach that uses RFID and NFC technologies to gather information in data-intensive working environments such as assisted living facilities. They introduce the RFID breadcurmbing interaction metaphor for efficient data management and dissemination. Once AAL systems are able to recognize the current activities of users, the task is now to help them in performing them. For this reason, one of the more active areas in ambient assisted living is the support for activities of daily living of the cognitive impaired. Two papers deal with this topic. People with Alzheimer’s have difficulties recognizing objects in their environment and navigating trough it. In ‘Augmented reality annotations to assist persons with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers’, Quintana and Favela describe the use of computer vision to create digital tags in J. Favela (&) CICESE, Ensenada, Mexico e-mail: favela@cicese.mx

Acoustic user interfaces for ambient-assisted living technologies

This contribution discusses technologies for acoustic user interaction in ambient-assisted living (AAL) scenarios. Acoustic user interfaces allow for a natural and convenient way to interact with technical systems e.g. via sound or speech presentation or via speech input by means of automatic speech recognition (ASR) as well as by detection and classification of acoustic events. Older persons targeted by AAL technologies especially need more easy-to-use methods to interact with inherently complex supporting technology. As an example we designed and evaluated an application for acoustic user interaction with a multi-media reminder and calendar system. For this purpose, mainly older participants were involved in user studies to continuously evaluate and support the development strictly following a user-centred design process. The results suggest a wide acceptance of acoustic user interfaces by older users either for controlling inherently complex AAL systems by using robust ASR technologies or as a natural and ambient way of presenting information to the user. However, further research is needed to increase the robustness of ASR systems when using hands-free equipment, i.e. to provide a real ambient way of interaction, and to introduce personalised speech and sound presentation schemes accounting for the individual hearing capabilities and sound preferences.

Ambient Assisted Living for ageing well – an overview

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) can be considered as a future umbrella for technological advances. Especially elderly-related activities will be facing severe economical, social and psychological challenges such that all categories of the society (scientists, industrials, stakeholders and politicians) are called to contribute solutions to deal with expected issues. This paper aims to inform the intended readership about the status of research, programmes as well as actual efforts and challenges in the field of AAL. This report provides first the status of the problem as well as an overview of the AAL topics targeted by the European AAL Association and the European Commission. Selected AAL projects in Europe and worldwide as well as existing umbrellas for funding AAL research and technologies are briefly introduced.

Getting older people involved in the process of ambient assisted living research and development

This paper proposes an investigation protocol for research and development of Ambient Assisted Living technologies for elderly people, based on effective strategies for motivating users and establishing a long-term relationship that enables them to enter in the User Centered Design loop. For a project that aims at the experimentation in the users' homes, we advocate the building and nourishing of a solid network of users and stakeholders for project support. It is crucial to involve local authorities, associations of elderly people, and social operators as de facto partners of the project, sharing with them the ambitious research and development objectives, and identifying ways of integrating research activities with their existing daily practices. This guarantees continual users' involvement, which favors interest in the scientific objectives, reduces risks of abandonment, and produces improved information.