A design process enabling adaptation in pervasive heterogeneous contexts

Abstract

In the next decades, the growth in population aging will cause important problems to most industrialized countries. To tackle this issue, Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) systems can reinforce the well-being of elderly people, by providing emergency, autonomy enhancement, and comfort services. These services will postpone the need of a medicalized environment and will allow the elderly to stay longer at home. However, each elderly has specific needs and a deployment environment of such services is likely unique. Furthermore, the needs evolve over time, and so does the deployment environment of the system. In this paper, we propose the use of a model-based development method, the adaptive medium approach, to enable dynamic adaptation of AAL systems. We also propose improvements to make it more suited to the AAL domain, such as considering heterogeneity and a composition model. The paper includes an evaluation of the prototype implementing the approach, and a comparison with related work.

Ubiquitous technologies for older people

“…They embrace Weiser's view [76] of technology as something that can blend into the background and becomes so seamlessly integrated into the environment that people do not event realise that they are using it. Accordingly, they described AT as pervasive [38], non-invasive, and non-intrusive [53] in the lives of (older) users. In the journal, we found several examples of AT development.…”

“…When considered, heterogeneity relates to diseases, capabilities, and habits and serves a functional purpose. In [38], for example, we found a reference to the concept of elderly ''heterogeneity'', followed by the technical proposal of ''adaptation''. In the introduction, the authors claim that most technological applications are either too general or too specific.…”

Customizing smart environments: A tabletop approach

“…New advances in AmI technologies deal with automation, transparency and adaptation [9], [18], [31], [46], as smart environments are increasingly provided with heterogeneous devices that need to be successfully integrated and interconnected [2], [14], [24]. The user's explicit interactions with the environment tend to be avoided in order to achieve ubiquitous solutions [34].…”

Ubiquitous Green Computing Techniques for High Demand Applications in Smart Environments

“…They offer a broad number of services, ranging from intelligent buildings to tourism recommendations or tracking and monitoring systems. Because of the growth in population aging, one of the most common applications is healthcare, especially in the field of Ambient Assisted Living systems that provide services to elderly people [ 5 ]. The deployment of this kind of applications in a Smart City requires the usage of a large number of heterogeneous sensors (in the order of tens of thousands of units).…”