Enhanced living environments employ information and communications technologies to support true ambient assisted living for adults and people with disabilities. This book provides an overview of today's architectures, techniques, protocols, components, and cloud-based solutions related to ambient assisted living and enhanced living environments. Topics covered include: an introduction to enhanced living environments; pervasive sensing for social connectedness; ethics in information and communication technologies; service scenarios in smart personal environments; technological support to stress level monitoring; big data systems to improve healthcare information searching over the Internet; sensors for wireless body area networks; linear wireless sensor networks and protocols in next generation networks; model-compilation challenges for cyber-physical systems; health monitoring using wireless body area networks; wearable health care; and intelligent systems for after-stroke home rehabilitation.
Inspec keywords: wide area networks; wireless sensor networks; medical information systems; ethical aspects; protocols; assisted living; ubiquitous computing; cyber-physical systems; Big Data; psychology; handicapped aids; cloud computing; home computing
Other keywords: information ethics; socioecological psychology; Big Data healthcare system; AALaaS platform; social connectedness; Internet; stress-level monitoring; after-stroke home rehabilitation; ELEaaS platform; wireless body area networks; linear wireless sensor networks; healthcare information searching; pervasive sensing; smart personal environments; protocols; health monitoring; enhanced living environments; next-generation networks; wearable healthcare; cyber-physical systems; communication ethics
Subjects: General and management topics; Aids for the handicapped; Biomedical communication; Computer assistance for persons with handicaps; Biology and medical computing; Home computing; General electrical engineering topics
This chapter introduces the ambient assisted living (AAL) and enhanced living environments (ELEs) platforms in their different aspects. With the integration of the information and communications technologies (ICT), cloud, fog, dew, and smart dust computing, microelectronics, sensor networks and many other pervasive devices, the use of ambient intelligence aims to construct a safe environment. There is a missing interaction of multiple stakeholders needing to collaborate for ELE supporting a multitude of AAL services. There are also barriers to innovation in the markets concerned, the governments and healthcare sector that do not still take place at a relevant scale. Many fundamental issues in ELE remain open. Most of the current efforts still do not fully express the power of human beings and the importance of social connections; societal activities are less noticed as well. This book constitutes an advanced research in the area of ELEs starting from end-users and platform definition and ending with service personalisation and implementation.
The chapter provides an overview for studying and understanding the psychological aspects of enhanced living environments (ELEs). First, socio-ecological psychology is presented as a macro theoretical approach to human environmental behaviour and relationships along with the main concepts of niche construction theory that may be used to broaden the theoretical foundations of ELEs. Second, the psychologically relevant literature of the home is reviewed with an emphasis on the transactional processes between individuals and their built and natural environments. Third, self-determination theory (SDT), a macro theory of human relationships and motivation, is described. SDT may provide insight about optimal conditions for constructing social ecological niches, most importantly for the development of home environments. As a conclusion, the chapter defines major themes and research directions where socio-ecological psychology may enrich research and practice around ELE themes.
Global population ageing is an emerging challenge of the twenty-first century. In an era of pervasive computing (i.e. the proliferation of ever-present smart devices), governments, companies, and academic institutions are working together to develop and promote cutting-edge initiatives that sustain the quality of life and address the complexities and opportunities of an ageing world. In this chapter, we propose a user-centred approach within a multidisciplinary framework, which incorporates human-computer interaction, social science, signal processing, and pervasive computing, to inspire the design of a bidirectional context-aware system to support social connectedness between the elderly and their caregivers. Following a review of previous works on socio-technical awareness systems and human activity recognition models, we describe our user-driven methodological approach and demonstrate the value and potential benefits of bidirectional activity-based peripheral systems within ambient assisted living environments.
Technologies have become an integral part of our daily lives and have contributed to the pace of history. Thus, our societies are made up of multiple generations who have diverse expectations and experiences with technology. On the other hand, ageing generations are not equal in the interest and the use of technological tools. By using a multidisciplinary approach, our chapter proposes to clarify the characteristics of the ageing generations and to reflect on the principles of adaptation and acceptability of gerontechnologies. Our contribution therefore wishes to articulate the shared challenges between the technological and social gerontological domains in order to think beyond a commercial logic and to base the technological innovation more on the complex needs expressed by the elders and their families. To this end, we discuss the limits to overcome and the ethical stakes to pursue in order to develop participatory approaches that ensure both social innovation and economic development.
This chapter presents results from ambient assisted living (AAL) and enhanced living environment (ELE) service identification and testing performed within an AAL lab. Possible end-user testing groups and scenarios of `AAL as a service' and `ELE as a service' (ELEaaS) platforms are described and specified. Firstly, protocols and services classifications are presented according to the end-user-specific requirements from communication and information point of view as the chapter aims to show how end-users, caregivers and service providers can be prepared for the challenges of the market. The aim of the test group is to verify and validate the platforms and services for the ELE created, integrated, described and specified. The testing is based on the platform technology and depends on the user requirements' analysis and ongoing work throughout use-cases. Existing living labs experience has been used and enriched by customized information and communication services known from the information and communication technologies sector. Description of the ELEaaS is done in general terms along with the testing needed to be performed against the general type of provided functionalities. Furthermore, customization of the services, applicability to the needs of all stakeholders, flexibility for data exchange, integration and interoperability between different versions and types of platforms need to be also verified.
Stress is widely associated with increased health risks (heart and brain diseases, diabetes, cancer, behavioural disorders, etc.). Moreover, a prolonged exposure to stress is known to negatively affect work performance, attitude, decision-making, etc. Furthermore, monitoring of stress levels and proper stress management are of crucial importance for fire-fighters, rescue crews, police force and other high-risk professions in terms of mission success and workforce preservation. In this regard, here we overview the state of the art in personal health monitoring systems and discuss the overall architecture and technology involved in the implementation of such functionality. A particular focus is put on the technology involved in the assessment of brain activity and negative emotional states, which are linked to stress, behavioural, mental disorders, etc. From application point of view we discuss the technological feasibility of stationary and mobile setups for stress-level assessment and monitoring. Finally, we outline the current trends and future research directions and comment on some inherent limitations of stress-level monitoring and on some challenges that remain unaddressed.
The chapter represents a new model for healthcare system that is suitable for big data. The system contributes to enhanced living environments by providing a medical information searching to the users. To make the system suitable for personalized searching of information, a model for user profile is presented. In the chapter is also described a new reasoner that uses fuzzy logic and probability theory with respect to the big data.
The inevitable progress of health monitoring technologies leads to continuous improvement of the monitoring sensors. They become smaller and compact, with lower power consumption and higher accuracy. These devices are then integrated into wireless body area networks (WBANs) which promise real-time healthcare monitoring during daily activities. WBANs or body sensor network is a wireless network of computing devices that can be carried over BAN devices. Sensors can be implanted in the body, worn on the body and their position can be fixed. There might be accompanying devices that people are free to carry in a pocket as a garment or in a handbag. The position of the device does not influence the person's comfort.
This chapter presents a generic `ambient assisted living as a service'/`enhanced living environment as a service' platform. Multiple platform elements are described by taking into account layered hierarchical models, horizontally and vertically planning models as well as models with planes. The main goal of the work is to identify the important platform parts, classify the existing models, and create a framework that will allow further protocols and services classification. The chapter starts with a presentation of the end-user requirements, continues with the analysis and design phases, and ends with a possible implementation of the platform as a cloud-based one, aiming to aggregate data from multiple different access and edge technological solutions and islands, and allowing data analysis and mining at the abstract level. This is considered as a driving force for further development of possible business solutions. The work is based on a real-life experience gained within living labs and conducted surveys on the topic.
Starting from the first years of this century wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been envisaged as stand-alone networks that will allow us to collect and control information from our surroundings. However, only a decade later, they have turned into one of the main pillars of ubiquitous communications and today they have come to exhibit variety, complexity and numbers never envisaged before. From exotic applications, they have turned into commodities, and recently with the introduction of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications they are seen as one of the underlying technologies that will make the new reality. Because of the different operational paradigm and strongly application-oriented characteristics, WSN mandate the development of new network protocols quite different from the traditional open systems interconnection layered protocols. Furthermore, their enormous variety, continuously emerging new application possibilities and the need to optimize their performance have given rise to different sub-divisions of WSN - underground WSN, underwater WSN, etc. One newly defined area is WSN with linear topology. Since this topology presents both new challenges and new advantages network and medium access control (MAC) layer protocol design for these networks has become a hot research topic. In the light of these and taking into consideration the fact that many of the proposed M2M applications require linear topologies and this chapter introduces the details on linear wireless sensor networks (LWSNs) and specifically concentrates on the MAC protocols which play the most important role in optimizing their performance from energy and delay point of view. The chapter is organized as follows: first, the concept and terminology related to LWSN is introduced, and then their communication model and specifics are discussed, followed by a detailed overview of the most recent MAC protocols designed specifically for LWSN. The chapter is concluded with some open research issues.
There are several “disconnects”which need to be addressed to provide effective means for engineering cyber-physical systems (CPS). One of them is how to construct an optimized application starting from high-level specifications taking into account exacerbated interactions with the physical environment and in the same time addressing new paradigms like mixed criticality, and distributed multi/many-cores platforms. We introduce in this chapter a new methodology called model-compilation for CPS. This methodology introduces new concepts and process that can be seen as a specification that tool editors and CPS application developers can integrate (instantiate) in their tool chain or development process.
The developments that shaped the twenty/twenty-first century with respect to wireless technologies have had a great influence on quality of life, where wireless body area networks (WBANs) - implantable sensor nodes, more specifically, have recently emerged as a successful initiative for monitoring health remotely, and thus a research challenge. Two concerns that need addressing here are heat dissipation which causes damage to surrounding tissues, and introduction of relay nodes to increase network lifetime, but on the other hand may cause health hazards. There arises a need to find an efficient network topology design to overcome the above-mentioned concerns. This chapter discusses in detail WBAN, its applications, related technologies, energy-aware topology design, efficient relay node placement methods and, last but not least, energy-efficient and thermal-aware routing techniques.
Wearable technology (wearable gadgets) means electronics that can be worn on the body using an invasive (implants) or non-invasive (external accessories) method. Both invasive and non-invasive wearable devices share the mobility, power autonomy and wireless connectivity required for the continuous exchange, recording and analysis of data over the Internet of Things (IoT). Indeed, the wearable technology is linked to ubiquitous/pervasive computing on wearable computers. In this context, the digital revolution and the continued growth of mobile networks have played a crucial role in the development of the wearable technology. Some wearable technologies, such as Bluetooth headsets, smart watches and web-enabled glasses, allow people to access data over Wi-Fi networks. Beyond home automation and monitoring, software companies are already developing applications for a wide range of end users, covering areas such as health and sports. Wearable technologies mean new opportunities in businesses development for new markets and data analytics. Personal data management, privacy by design in the IoT era and cloud computing virtualization will guide how companies will use the data collected from wearable devices.
Rehabilitation robotics has become increasingly interested for the research community and addresses the study of different robotic systems having as the main goal to restore the human functions for those people that suffers a stroke or a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). In this case, the motor control is affected and also the patient's independent living. Many researchers studied different ways to recover functional motor skills and they demonstrated that repetitive training may be necessary to modify neural organization and to help patients in restoring a part of their functions. In this context, the chapter presents the design of an intelligent haptic robotic glove prototype for the rehabilitation of the patients that have suffered a CVA. The control system for a rehabilitation hand exoskeleton is presented and different approaches are discussed. The performance of the control system is demonstrated not only by the simulation, but also by a set of patients from the Rehabilitation Hospital of Iasi (Romania). The main goal of the proposed system is to help the patient to make a lot of rehabilitation exercises by themselves, at home.