Ambient Assisted Living and Enhanced Living Environments

Principles, Technologies and Control

Ciprian Dobre, Constandinos x Mavromoustakis, Nuno Garcia, Rossitza Ivanova Goleva, George Mastorakis

• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780128052822
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Ingeniería eléctrica y telecomunicaciones

Ambient Assisted Living and Enhanced Living Environments: Principles, Technologies and Control separates the theoretical concepts concerning the design of such systems from their real-world implementations. For each important topic, the book bridges theory and practice, introducing the instruments needed by professionals in their activities.

To this aim, topics are presented in a logical sequence, with the introduction of each topic motivated by the need to respond to claims and requirements from a wide range of AAL/ELE applications. The advantages and limitations of each model or technology are presented through concrete case studies for AAL/ELE systems.

The book also presents up-to-date technological solutions to the main aspects regarding AAL/ELE systems and applications, a highly dynamic scientific domain that has gained much interest in the world of IT in the last decade. In addition, readers will find discussions on recent AAL/ELE technologies that were designed to solve some of the thorniest business problems that affect applications in areas such as health and medical supply, smart city and smart housing, Big Data and Internet of Things, and many more.

• Introduces readers to technologies supporting the development of Ambient Assisted Living applications
• Explains state-of-the-art technological solutions for the main issues regarding AAL and Enhanced Living Environments
• Reports the development process of scientific and commercial applications and platforms that support AAL and ELE
• Identifies the advanced solutions in the context of Enhanced Living Environments

Chapter 1

Introduction to the AAL and ELE Systems

Ciprian Dobre^⁎; Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis^†; Nuno M. Garcia^‡; George Mastorakis^§; Rossitza I. Goleva^{¶ ⁎}University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
^†University of Nicosia, Cyprus
^‡University of Beira Interior, Portugal
^§Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Greece
^¶Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria

Abstract

Enhanced Living Environments (ELE) encompass all Information and Communications Technologies' (ICT) achievements supporting true Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environments. It is an umbrella for the infrastructures and services needed to sustain independent and more autonomous living, via seamless integration of ICT within homes and residences. For this, ELE encompasses the latest developments associated with the Internet of Things, towards designing services designed to better help and support people, or as a general term, to better live their life and interact with their environment. This chapter makes an introduction into the technologies, technique and mechanisms, and algorithms, in other words the systems support for Ambient Assisted Living and Enhanced Living Environments.

Keywords

Ambient Assisted Living; Enhanced Living Environments; Health and social care; Quality of life; Independent living; Info-communication technologies; Smart Environments; Assistive Environments

1.1 Introduction

Today we witness the miniaturization of computer technology, which is best reflected in the processors and tiny sensors that are being integrated into everyday objects. Our future witnesses the integration of ICT into our clothes, appliances, our households — and soon enough, such technology-driven ordinary objects will start to behave “intelligently”, to communicate between themselves and with large data centers privately holding our “digital life”, running against such data smart algorithms, all for our benefit, to provide us with ever-more smart and self-aware decisions designed to improve our life. This corresponds to a future similar to what Mark Weiser foreseen some 20 years (Weiser, 1991), when he coined the term ubiquitous computing, a world where ever-more-present computers, functioning invisibly and unobtrusively in the background, will be able to serve people with everyday activities, at home and at work, to free us (to a large extent at least) from tedious routine tasks.

A similar vision was later coined by the European Union's Information Society Technologies Program Advisory Group (ISTAG) (Ahola, 2001), to define the term ambient intelligence (or, AmI for short) similarly to describe a vision where “people will be surrounded by intelligent and intuitive interfaces embedded in everyday objects around us and an environment recognizing and responding to the presence of individuals in an invisible way” (Ahola, 2001).

This vision of a future where technology allows everyday objects to interact and work together for mankind, offers fascinating possibilities. As Bohn et al. (2004) predict, parents will be able to keep track of their children in the busiest of crowds, when location sensors and communications modules are sewn into their clothes. Devices attached to timetables and signposts will guide blind people in unknown environments by “talking” to them via a wireless headset (Coroama and Röthenbacher, 2003). Tiny communicating computers, the size of dust particles, will act as sensors to detect dispersion of oil spills and forest fires, leading to a much more protected environment. And, faced with the problem of an increasingly older population, society will rely on smart objects to improve the quality-of-life towards old age, and provide ever-more protection and social inclusion, to its senior citizens.

The reality is that society is, even today, facing an increase ageing of our population. Health and well-being are driving engines to the realization of a technology-driven society that will be able to better deal with the projections of the future. In European Union, the ratio of people aged 65 years and above will increase to 30.0% by 2060 (to an alarming 151.5 million people) (Giannakouris, 2008). Something similar is estimated for USA, where people over 65 years will represent 20.2% of the population by 2050 (Vincent and Velkoff, 2010), and for Japan, with an estimate of 39.6% (Takahashi et al., 2003).

Senior people, in particular, have a higher incidence rate for physical and/or cognitive impairments. This rate increases with the passing of years. As we get older, we find ourselves affected by sensing problems, we face a constant decrease in the mental capabilities to process information, a reduction in mobility, and a negatively-affected precision of doing even simple tasks. With age, we experience difficulties in dealing with complex scenarios or with keeping a focus when solving problems over a longer period of time. As a consequence, we progressively lose the capability to perform autonomously even routine daily activities. Thus, instead of fostering independent living, household appliances become rather a burden that adds to ageing limitations.

Living assistance systems designed to support elderlies (but also other types of patients, affected in their daily life by various medical conditions) live a better and more comfortable life in their own environment, are generally referred to as patient-care systems. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is an emerging multi-disciplinary field at the intersection between information and communication technologies, sociological sciences, medical research, that aims to develop personal healthcare and telehealth systems for countering the effects of growing elderly population. One definition of AAL is given by Kung and Jean-Bart (2010): “intelligent systems that will assist elderly individuals for a better, healthier and safer life in the preferred living environment and covers concepts, products and services that interlink and improve new technologies and the social environment”. Thus, AAL is a multi-disciplinary field dealing with personal healthcare and telehealth systems for countering the effects of growing elderly population (Belbachir et al., 2010). With AAL, technology and science work together to provide improvements in the quality of life for people in their homes, with goals such as reducing the financial burden on the budgets of healthcare providers and costs associated with the social inclusion of elderly people, worldwide.

AAL systems are developed with personalized (design for the patient), adaptive (adapt to the patient and running conditions), and anticipatory (anticipate the event before it can harm) requirements. The goal, and as we will see below, is to integrate high quality for th medical and comfort service being provided, to achieve interoperability (with technologies, and with similar other systems), usability (considering the patient capabilities), security (e.g., of the personal digital data being used), and accuracy (e.g., in the precision of a diagnosis). Such objectives are still posing challenges to the large-scale adoption of such systems, although solutions are being developed as we speak. To solve them, AAL use AmI as a tool to provide integral solutions for supporting the person (elderly) in his/her independent living in different contexts (Blasco et al., 2014): dwellings, transport, workplaces, etc. To describe the kind of applications AAL can support, the European Ambient Assisted Living Innovation Alliance proposes, in fact, three macro scenarios for AAL development (van den Broek et al., 2010):

1. AAL4persons, with the objective of “Ageing well for the person”;

2. AAL in the community, where the focus is on applications designed to support the social inclusion of elderly people into society, to improve their communications and their participation in the community;

3. AAL@work, including applications supporting elderly and people with disabilities at work.

The general umbrella, for all three, as stated by O'Grady et al. (2010), is that “Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is advocated as technological solutions that will enable the elderly population maintain their independence for a longer time than would otherwise be the case”. To achieve such a goal, an AAL system should provide components at least for context-awareness, where the context includes the person being monitored, for providing help when needed, detecting abnormal situations and acting accordingly (Blasco et al., 2014).

In a response to such requirements for AAL, Enhanced Living Environments (ELE) is the term coined to refer to where AAL meets and makes use of Information and Communication Technologies — it sits at the intersection between AAL and AmI, and technology. To design, plan, deploy and operate, an AAL system often comprehends the integration of several scientific areas. Such systems need dedicated software, hardware and service architectures, specifically designed for AAL. They need efficient algorithms for AAL, that can deal with processing of large amounts of data and of biosignals in lossy environments. Finally, they rely on communication and data transmission protocols for AAL.

Different ELE technologies are today aiming to construct safe environments around assisted peoples and help them maintain independent living. Most efforts towards the realization of ambient assisted living systems are based on developing pervasive devices and use Ambient Intelligence to integrate these devices together to construct a safety environment. The missing interaction of multiple stakeholders needing to collaborate for ELE environments supporting a multitude of AAL services, as well as barriers to innovation in the markets concerned, the governments, and health and care sector, these innovations do not yet take place at a relevant scale.

1.2 AAL/ELE Systems and Applications

We believe the reasons for the increasing interest in ambient assisted living applications are twofold; the well-known demographic shift with growing share of elderly in the population, and the rapid development of wirelessly connected embedded sensor devices in combination with efficient IT and storage infrastructures. Focus for the research on ambient assisted living has been technical systems, infrastructures and services to support elderly people in their daily routine, to allow an independent and safe lifestyle as long as possible, via the seamless integration of information and communication technologies within homes and residences.

The European initiative Active and Assisted Living Joint Programme (AAL JP) supports applied research on ICT-enhanced services for ageing (AAL-Europe, 2016). EIT Health is another European project for active ageing (EIT, 2016). The European COST action IC1303 Algorithms, Architectures and Platforms for Enhanced Living Environments (AAPELE) is a third example of research in this field (AAPELE, 2016).

A classification of the AAL/ELE application subdomains is presented by Nehmer et al. (2006):

For Indoor Assistance, applications can be classified as:

• Emergency Treatment Services: emergency prediction, emergency detection, and emergency prevention;

• Autonomy Enhancement Services: assistance for activities such as cooking, eating, drinking, cleaning, dressing, and medication;

• Comfort Services: logistic services, services for finding t...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedications
• Contributors
• Biographies
• Preface
• Glossary
• Acronyms
• Chapter 1: Introduction to the AAL and ELE Systems
• Chapter 2: Implanted Wireless Body Area Networks: Energy Management, Specific Absorption Rate and Safety Aspects
• Chapter 3: Energy Efficient Communication in Ambient Assisted Living
• Chapter 4: The Human Factor in the Design of Successful Ambient Assisted Living Technologies
• Chapter 5: Matching Requirements for Ambient Assisted Living and Enhanced Living Environments with Networking Technologies
• Chapter 6: Recent Advances in Remote Assisted Medical Operations
• Chapter 7: Cloud Based Smart Living System Prototype
• Chapter 8: AAL and ELE Platform Architecture
• Chapter 9: Developing Embedded Platforms for Ambient Assisted Living
• Chapter 10: Wearable Electronics for Elderly Health Monitoring and Active Living
• Chapter 11: Cloud-Oriented Domain for AAL
• Chapter 12: Adaptive Workspace Interface for Facilitating the Knowledge Transfer from Retired Elders to Start-up Companies
• Chapter 13: Telemonitoring as a Core Component to Enforce Remote Biofeedback Control Systems
• Chapter 14: The Role of Smart Homes in Intelligent Homecare and Healthcare Environments
• Chapter 15: Visual Information-Based Activity Recognition and Fall Detection for Assisted Living and eHealthCare
• Chapter 16: End-Users Testing of Enhanced Living Environment Platform and Services
• Chapter 17: M2M Communications and Their Role in AAL
• Index