Context awareness architecture for ambient-assisted living applications: Case study of nighttime wandering

Abstract

Objectives: This work presents an ambient-assisted living application that encourages seniors during nocturnal wandering episodes to return to bed in calm and comfort reassurance. Methods: Structuring knowledge by designing a software architecture capable of delivering high-level analysis and processing. A senior's home has been upgraded into a smart home enabling the gathering of habits for two weeks and set up for personalized assistance over four weeks. Home automation devices associated with Actigraph monitors and self-reported sleep were used for more accuracy.Results: The architectural model can be used in ambient-assisted living applications for which data collection is permanent and continuous. Its layered organization facilitates the management of specific and general activities of daily life. The results of the home experience show that the system gave a notification whenever the need arose. On the other hand, it allowed the caregiver to get more information about the lifestyle of the senior. Conclusions: Future work should focus on providing more services to contextualize assistance. Ontology is used to structure all the ambient knowledge of the smart home. We also plan to do more home experiments.

A Study of Architectural Barriers and the Potential Role of Assistive Technologies in Long-term Healthcare Centres for People with Alzheimer’s

“…AT can provide a connection between the PWADs' OT and their surrounding environment to create an interactive therapeutic environment that supports PWADs' self-orientation (Fig. 7) [47]. AT is any device or system that enables PWADs to accomplish tasks they would otherwise be unable to perform or improves the ease and safety with which the task can be performed [2].…”

Interactive architecture as a therapeutic environment for people with Alzheimer’s disease, a scoping review

“…The proper promotion of AT benefits requires strong local and national leadership, with advocates explaining the ways in which AT can bring benefits to PWAD and their careers. AT can play an important role in several daily life activities of PWAD (Hofmann et al, 2003;Kenfack Ngankam et al, 2020;Topo, 2009), as it has been shown training improved the task performance of PWAD substantially, and they appeared to like this approach. New interactive media, therefore, may yield interesting opportunities for rehabilitation and therapeutic interventions (Hofmann et al, 2003).…”

“…Several studies that examined the use of AT for PWAD have shown promising results. For example, a case study of night-time wandering (Kenfack Ngankam et al, 2020) showed the importance of context awareness architecture for ambient assisted-living applications. Another study presented and reflected on recent findings on how PwD experience and manage their daily lives through their own initiative, including their use of technology (Topo, 2009).…”

Influencing health behaviour using smart building interventions for people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment: expert interviews and a systematic literature review

“…There was limited interaction of the residents with the installation in the current form Kenfack Ngankam [74] 2020 Time spend in different spaces (living room, bedroom, kitchen, outside, bathroom) and prompting instances per night per type of prompt…”

“…The technology often does this by structuring daily processes into smaller and understandable steps, by increasing safety and by providing memory support. Examples from the examined literature are step-by-step instruction of washing hands [49], light "paths" to guide people to and from a bathroom [68,74], support when getting lost [72] and using sensor technology to help locate items [71,75]. When incentive motivation is used in smart building interventions, the system can give feedback to the person with dementia.…”