Advances in technology has not only led to the start of innovative solutions and new business opportunities in different sectors but also reduced manpower needs and operational costs. Furthermore, the quality of provided services has been improved. Therefore, recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) has gained a great momentum as a key enabling technology for a wide range of health care applications, especially for the elderly and disabled. Although, solutions based on IoT technology have started to support the elderly and disabled in many areas of their life and work and the IoT helps improve quality of life for the elderly and disabled, the amount of data collected by the IoT has increased tremendously and surpassed the expectations. This makes it necessary to investigate approaches and solutions in order to efficiently utilise large amounts of data, especially in health care applications. In this paper, we are first going to review existing approaches and IoT solutions specifically proposed and designed for the elderly and disabled. Then, we are going to investigate prospects and research challenges in the use of the IoT in the services designed for elderly people and people with disabilities to provide an insight into future research opportunities. Index Terms -The Internet of Things, Elderly people, People with disabilities, Research challenges, Future research directions.

In parallel with the significant and exciting advancements in robot technologies, the use of humanoid robots to support teaching strategies and learning goals has become a popular topic. Different from the traditional instructional or learning tools, humanoid robots can exhibit mobile behaviours and numerous repetitions and are very helpful to the students in developing problem-solving and collaboration abilities. Presently, the roles of humanoid robots in classrooms fall into four main categories: learning materials, learning companions, teaching assistants and communication mediators to support group learning, respectively. With the humanoid appearance, anthropomorphism, interaction, flexibility, repeatability and digital data representation, humanoid robots have great potential to be useful especially in preschool and primary school education. In this paper, limitations and challenges of the use of humanoid robots as teaching assistants are presented in addition to exploring the relationship between humanoid robots and performance in learning. Keywords: Humanoid robot, teaching, social interaction, learning tool, assisted learning.

Since a humanoid robot does not get tired regardless of how many mistakes a student makes, and because it can be equipped with novel teaching techniques and updated with the most current knowledge, it can be useful for achieving many educational goals. The rationale behind this is that it has been shown in the literature that robots are more useful as teaching aids than computers or other instructional tools, as they can mimic human responses. Furthermore, humans, especially children, prefer robot interaction to other interaction types. Adults generally struggle to learn a foreign language, but this is true of some students, too. With their multilingual interaction capabilities, their ability to provide real-time feedback, and their humanlike physical shape, some types of humanoid robots can be of great assistance to students in learning a foreign language. The use of humanoid robots leads to a personal connection with the students, and this can help overcome issues related to shyness, reluctance, frustration and lack of confidence that may emerge in dealing with a human teacher. Moreover, as humanoid robots can be programmed to know specifically what each individual student needs to learn, they can be quite useful for one-on-one speaking activities. Considering the many possibilities that can be offered by information and communication technology tools, particularly by humanoid robots, this paper reviews the roles and functions of humanoid robots in teaching a foreign language, presents novel approaches in this domain, provides research challenges, and finally outlines future research directions.

Smart Home is indeed a broad concept which includes the techniques and systems applied to living spaces. While its main goal is to reduce the consumption of energy, it provides many benefits including living in comfort, security and increasing flexibility. Smart homes are achieved through networking, control and automation technologies. Since smart homes offer more comfort and security and provide novel innovative services, people with disabilities or the elderly can take the advantages and improve their life quality. However, for such novel services, an analytical infrastructure which can manage overall data flow provided by various sensors, understand anomalous behaviour, and make necessary decisions. In this study, for efficient data handling and visualisation, an integrated smart service approach based on the use of a smart vest is proposed. The smart vest plays a key role in the proposed system since it provides the main health parameters of the monitored person to the smart home service and enables tracking of the monitored person's location. The proposed system offers many benefits to both people with disabilities and the elderly and their families in terms of increased efficiency of health care service and comfort for the monitored person. It can also reduce the cost of health care services by reducing the number of periodical visits.

In parallel with the significant developments in robotics, humanoid robots have become popular recently. It is known that when humanoid robots are used for educational goals, students become more interested in learning activities, develop better situation awareness through exercises and physical activities, and learn more effectively. Therefore, humanoid robots will possibly play a key role in education in the future. Since humanoid robots have enhanced social skills, are able to repeat a particular sequence many times, and provide real-time feedback, they can improve the engagement of students with intellectual disabilities and may find significant acceptance in specific target groups, such as students with autism spectrum disorder. In this chapter, the authors investigate the use of humanoid robots for students with intellectual disabilities and review existing approaches in this domain. In addition, limitations and challenges to the use of humanoid robots for educational goals are discussed. Finally, the authors investigate research challenges in this domain and state future research directions.