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2015 | Buch

Ambient Assisted Living

Italian Forum 2014

herausgegeben von: Bruno Andò, Pietro Siciliano, Vincenzo Marletta, Andrea Monteriù

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buchreihe : Biosystems & Biorobotics

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Über dieses Buch

This book documents the state of the art in the field of ambient assisted living (AAL), highlighting the impressive potential of novel methodologies and technologies to enhance well-being and promote active ageing. The coverage is wide ranging, with sections on assistive devices, elderly people monitoring, home rehabilitation, ICT solutions for AAL, living with chronic conditions, robotic assistance for the elderly, sensing technologies for AAL, and smart housing. The book comprises a selection of the best papers presented at the Fifth Italian Forum on Ambient Assisted Living, which was held in Catania, Italy, in September 2014 and brought together end users, technology teams, and policy makers to develop a consensus on how to improve provision for elderly and impaired people. Readers will find that the expert contributions offer clear insights into the ways in which the most recent exciting advances may be expected to assist in addressing the needs of the elderly and those with chronic conditions.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
Erratum to: Ambient Assisted Living
Bruno Andò, Pietro Siciliano, Vincenzo Marletta, Andrea Monteriù

Models and Algorithms for AAL

Frontmatter
A Quality Model for Service Delivery in AAL and AT Provision

The effectiveness of services providing assistive technology (AT) and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions is crucial to the success of any intervention. Centres specialized in AT and AAL are generally part of a complex network of public services and are integrated within the rehabilitation, education and assistance processes aimed at people with disabilities and the elderly which require the involvement of different professionals. The service of providing AT and AAL solutions is therefore a complex process which needs a multidisciplinary approach requiring specific models for the analysis of quality. To date, there is a lack of research in the AAL field targeting quality assessment of AAL interventions. The present paper describes a model for AAL quality assessment and provides preliminary data on its usefulness in practice.

Claudio Bitelli, Lorenzo Desideri, Massimiliano Malavasi
Pedestrian Simulation: Considering Elderlies in the Models and in the Simulation Results

This paper presents improvements to the computational model of MakkSim aimed at allowing the simulation of aged people and persons with mobility impairments. In particular, a method for modelling heterogeneity in speed is discussed and two special objects of the environment (i.e., stairs and seats), have been defined; in addition, a proposal for modelling the presence of a caretaker is described as a particular type of group of pedestrians. Finally, the paper presents a way of computing social costs implied by the environment taking into account the characteristics of pedestrians moving throughout the related facilities. The overall objective is to achieve a system usable for the evaluation of the usability and accessibility of planned environments and facilities by means of simulation, by also taking into account this category of people.

Stefania Bandini, Luca Crociani, Giuseppe Vizzari
User-Oriented Services Based on Sensor Data

This paper explores the issue of creating end-to-end services for older adults and their caregivers starting from a continuous gathering of sensor data from their living environment. The described work is part of the

GiraffPlus

project in which an intelligent AAL environment has been developed. The whole system relies on a state-of-the-art middleware for sensor data gathering and the pursued perspective is the one of designing added value services based on such data. The paper presents the general project concept and its different ingredients then presents two different services: a reasoner for person tracking, and an interaction service that connects the human network involved in a given application environment.

Paolo Barsocchi, Giulio Bernardi, Amedeo Cesta, Luca Coraci, Gabriella Cortellessa, Riccardo De Benedictis, Francesco Furfari, Andrea Orlandini, Filippo Palumbo, Aleš Štimec
Investments and Sustainability of Public Expenditure in the Health Sector

The impact of the Italian expenditure for the health care on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and on total public expenditure, is in line with those of the major industrialized countries, and somewhat lower than the European average. The issue of the Italian health sector is not simply related to the contraction of the expenditure: in effect, it should be highlighted that Italy currently does not spend “a lot” and, above all, invests “little” in the mentioned sector. Nevertheless, the health sector can be a very important flywheel for the economic recovery but, in order to make this possible, it is necessary to pay a lot of attention, and to invest the best resources. In this work, the authors intend to develop an analysis of the desirability of investment on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the health sector, and the consequent compatibility with current expenditure, by identifying at the outset the channels multipliers related to the resources at present allocated to the current health expenditure and capital account.

Maurizio Ciaschini, Monica De Angelis, Andrea Monteriù, Rosita Pretaroli, Francesca Severini, Claudio Socci
Design Adaptable and Adaptive User Interfaces: A Method to Manage the Information

Designing a multi-user adaptive interface means designing for diversity in end-users and contexts of use, and implies making alternative design decisions, at various levels of the interaction project, inherently leading to diversity in the final design outcomes. Nowadays Adaptive User Interfaces (AUIs) is becoming one of the major objectives addressed by Human Computer Interaction research. The present study provides an overview about the methods currently applied to the definition and development of AUIs. In order to study and develop adaptive user interfaces with the purpose to guarantee socialization, safety and environmental sustainability in a domestic day-by-day living space, a new method of holistic and adaptive user interface is proposed to support the modeling of information related to the user and the context of the interaction. In order to generate the user profiles, subjects older than 40 years with different levels of technology affinity will be considered. These prototypes will be tested through different use cases in the context of smart home environments. The final goal is to produce smart objects and consumer goods able to automatically satisfy the different skills, abilities, needs and human preferences, in an environment where each solutions address different individuals.

Francesca Gullà, Silvia Ceccacci, Michele Germani, Lorenzo Cavalieri

Sensing Technologies for AAL

Frontmatter
Predicting Freezing of Gait in Parkinson’s Disease with a Smartphone: Comparison Between Two Algorithms

The freezing of gait (FOG) is a common and highly distressing motor symptom of patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Effective management of FOG is difficult given its episodic nature, heterogeneous manifestation and limited responsiveness to drug treatment. Clinicians found alternative approaches, such as rhythmic cueing. We have built a smartphone-based architecture in agreement with acceptability and usability requirements which is able to detect FOG and provide acoustic feedback to the patient. The aim of this work is to compare the reliability of a real-time FOG detection using two different algorithms implemented on the smartphone.

Lucia Pepa, Federica Verdini, Marianna Capecci, Francesco Maracci, Maria Gabriella Ceravolo, Tommaso Leo
A Wireless Sensor Insole to Collect and Analyse Gait Data in Real Environment: The WIISEL Project

In Europe 30 % of population will be aged 65 or more in 2060. Falls are a major health problem for older adults with immediate effects, such as fractures and head injuries, and longer term effects, as fear of falling, loss of independence and disability. Therefore, falls are a huge social and economic problem. The goals of the WIISEL project is to develop an unobtrusive, self-learning and wearable system aimed at assessing gait impairments and fall risk in the home setting of older adults; assessing activity and mobility in daily living conditions; identifying decline in mobility performance and detecting falls in the home setting. A high-tech insole with wireless communication capabilities will be worn by the elderly, monitorizing their posture and evaluating gait dynamics via a matrix of printed pressure sensors.

Mirko Di Rosa, Vera Stara, Lorena Rossi, Fanny Breuil, Elisenda Reixach, Joan Garcia Paredes, Stefan Burkard
MuSA: Wearable Multi Sensor Assistant for Human Activity Recognition and Indoor Localization

In this paper a wearable multi-sensor device is used for a Behavioral Analysis (BA) focused on Human Activity Recognition (HAR) and Indoor Localization (IL). The analysis exploit a wearable device equipped with inertial sensors like accelerometer, gyroscope and compass in order to evaluate quantity and quality of movements.

F. Montalto, C. Guerra, V. Bianchi, I. De Munari, P. Ciampolini
Tools for Behavior Monitoring: An Ambient Assisted Living Real Experience

In recent years, sophisticated technologies for personal monitoring are rapidly spreading. Mainly, these devices are medical sensors for domestic use, that allow for monitoring the most important physiological parameters. These smart devices enable to detect information closely related to the user’s health. Despite the effectiveness of these tools, such approaches do not allow for the detection of the personal wellness state, in a wider sense. From this point of view, more information can be detected by the analysis of user’s behavior. Especially in the case of elderly users, changes of behavior may be clues of situation of uneasiness or worsening of health condition. To support the monitoring of wellness conditions, tools and techniques for behavioral analysis have been developed at Information Engineering Department of University of Parma (ITALY). In this paper, a non-invasive and cost-effective technology is presented: the CARDEAdomus Ambient Assisted Living System. Eventually, results related to a experimentation, carried out by means of the System in a real context, are showed.

Agostino Losardo, Ferdinando Grossi, Guido Matrella, Ilaria De Munari, Paolo Ciampolini
Integration of Real-Time Metabolic Rate Measurement in a Low-Cost Tool for the Thermal Comfort Monitoring in AAL Environments

The work presented illustrates a methodology to integrate the continuous estimation of metabolic rate in a monitoring tool for the indoor thermal comfort in AAL environments. The monitoring tool adopts an infrared (IR) sensor to retrieve indoor temperatures and evaluate the mean radiant temperature for multiple positions in the space. Other sensors embedded in the central unit allow the estimation of the PMV (Predicted Mean Vote) index. Beyond the ambient quantities, an accurate estimation of the personal parameters (clothing insulation and metabolic rate) allows a reliable assessment of the indoor thermal conditions. According to standards, heart rate measurement can provide an accurate estimation of metabolic rate, but the need of measuring it continuously made this method not applicable in real scenarios. However, in Ambient Assisting Living applications it is easy to monitor vital signs from the existing equipment, e.g. wearable sensors. Therefore, this paper presents the results of the integration of low-cost heart rate sensors in a tool for the monitoring of thermal comfort. The solution turned out to have an uncertainty for the metabolic rate of ±7 % of the reading in a range from 0.7 to 3.4 m, considering that the sensor used has a discrepancy of ±1.3 bpm with respect to a reference measurement system. An accuracy of ±0.05 in the PMV computation was found as result of the uncertainty in the estimation of

M

.

Gian Marco Revel, Marco Arnesano, Filippo Pietroni
Wearable Sensors for Human Movement Monitoring in Biomedical Applications: Case Studies

The research on wearable sensors for human movement monitoring is motivated by the diffusion of the reduction of the motor skills in a large part of European and World population. With the ageing of the population, this figure is expected to rise dramatically in the next 10 years. Wearable sensor systems aid and assist the patients during their rehabilitation programs, also at home, and support the doctor during both rehabilitation therapy and monitoring operations, giving him/her quantitative values of human movements. Therefore, wearable sensors can be the answer to the need for patient care, reducing the costs of the health facilities and promoting at the same time the health and wellbeing. In this paper, an analysis of different case studies regarding wearable sensors for human movement monitoring is proposed. The aim is to identify the common characteristics and give at the same time different common design strategies that can be adopted and considered in the design of these wearable sensors.

Michela Borghetti, Alessandro Dionisi, Emilio Sardini, Mauro Serpelloni
A Near Field Communication-Based Platform for Mobile Ambient Assisted Living Applications

This paper presents an open platform for continuous monitoring of clinical signs through a smart and non-invasive wearable device. In order to accomplish a communication in proximity, the Near Field Communication wireless technology is used, providing a fast link between the device and the host, avoiding the pairing (as typically occurs for Bluetooth protocol) and limiting the power consumption. The Arduino ecosystem has been used for prototyping since it allows an easy and open integration of ad-hoc functionalities. The first release of the platform has been customized for human body temperature measurement, although other kind of clinical signs could be handled with a low-level effort.

Alessandro Leone, Gabriele Rescio, Pietro Siciliano
Domestic Monitoring of Respiration and Movement by an Electromagnetic Sensor

The aim of this paper is to investigate the capabilities of a novel electromagnetic technique designed for contactless monitoring of breathing activity in Ambient Assisted Living applications. The method is based on the transmission of a frequency sweep and the measurement of the reflection coefficient to determine the respiration rate of a subject. To date, the method is under optimization, but it has already shown interesting capabilities of calculating not only the respiration rate, but also additional features, as the position of the subject inside a room and his/her movements. After a brief mathematical description of the algorithm, some preliminary tests will be described concerning the monitoring of a human target inside a room. These first results clearly show the capability of the method to detect the subject, his breathing rate, position and physical activity. Of course further signal processing is required in order to distinguish between different types of movements and to classify them.

V. Petrini, V. Di Mattia, A. De Leo, P. Russo, V. Mariani Primiani, G. Manfredi, G. Cerri, L. Scalise

Assistive Devices

An AAL Adaptive User Interface to Support Frail People in Manufacturing

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is one of the most strategic research fields of research due to the increasing aging of the world population and the developments of assistive technologies, which enable people with specific demands to live longer and better by providing specific care. It has been demonstrated that AAL technologies provide effective support to frail people and their application is increasing in home and medical contexts with positive effects on costs reduction. However, such models have been rarely applied outside the domestic context. This paper describes the application of AAL concepts to manufacturing in order to support frail people to properly handle machine tools and complex systems. It presents an industrial case study focusing on machine tool operators: under these circumstances frailty assumes a broad sense as people have to carry out highly specialized jobs and also mild deficiencies can represent a frailty (i.e. slight reduction in sight, hands that are not perfectly steady, slightly reduced mobility or human force). The case study in particular aims at designing an adaptive user interface based on AAL principles and user-centered approach to support frail operators to work better and more safely.

Margherita Peruzzini, Matteo Iualè, Michele Germani
Electromagnetic Technologies as Travel Aids for Visually Impaired Subjects

The aim of this paper is to present the electromagnetic (EM) technology as possible assistive technology for the mobility tasks of visually impaired subjects. The paper will present their characteristics, discussing pros and cons of their use with respect to the existing traditional technologies and electronic travel aids, in terms of performances, miniaturization and wearing comfort. In particular, two applications of EM technologies will be presented more in detail: a first example consists in the design and realization of a laboratory prototype of an EM system able to detect the presence of obstacles along the walking path of visually impaired users and hence to assist them during their mobility tasks, possibly allowing them to walk safely and independently. The second example is the theoretical and experimental study of feasibility of an EM system specifically addressed to visually impaired runners. In conclusion, some hints for discussion will be presented; the user interaction with the sensing system, the signal analysis and possible features extraction will be reviewed addressing issues requiring a multidisciplinary approach.

G. Cerri, A. De Leo, V. Di Mattia, G. Manfredi, V. Mariani Primiani, V. Petrini, M. Pieralisi, P. Russo, L. Scalise
Evacuation Aid for Elderly in Care Homes and Hospitals: An Interactive System for Reducing Pre-movement Time in Case of Fire

Population aging phenomena are increasing the attention to safety aspects for Elderly in care homes and hospitals: individuals that can autonomously evacuate should be helped during the evacuation by providing specific devices to them. Our activities are aimed by the design of “guidance” system for these categories, and to inquiry their impact on people motion. One of the most important evacuation steps is represented by the pre-movement phase: after the fire alarm sound, individuals continue to spend time in activities not directly connected to the evacuation. This phase could be very long. This work proposes an interactive system for the pre-movement time based on an experimental analysis of pre-movement time behaviors. The system is composed of an individual wearable device: the Zig-Bee-based localization module identifies people’s positions after the alarm and understands whether they are motionless; the interactive module gives a personal stimulus to the latecomers. Technical requirements are evaluated. The effectiveness of the system is investigated through simulations: up to 30 % reduction in total evacuation time can be obtained.

Marco D’Orazio, Gabriele Bernardini, Sauro Longhi, Paolo Olivetti
RESIMA—An Assistive System for Visual Impaired in Indoor Environment

This paper presents results achieved during the RESIMA project aimed to develop a remote monitoring system to assist weak people to safely exploit unknown environments. The system consists of a wireless sensors network distributed within the environment and intelligent paradigms able to acquire awareness on the environment, the user’s location and his/her posture. Exploiting such piece of information allows the system to properly manage the user-environment interaction (UEI) and to contextualize the user within the environmental status (UEC). Information generated by UEI and UEC paradigms allow for guaranteeing a real-time and continuous form of assistance for the user tailored to his/her specific needs.

Bruno Andò, Salvatore Baglio, Cristian O. Lombardo, Vincenzo Marletta
An Electronic Cane with a Haptic Interface for Mobility Tasks

There are numerous electronic solutions to help visually impaired in mobility tasks in everyday life. Although many of these systems correctly detect obstacles and locate services, thus improving the life of visually impaired people, generally the information provided by these systems is codified arbitrarily, thus requiring a learning phase and therefore discourages their use. This paper proposes an haptic approach to provide information about the presence of obstacles along the walking path that can be easily understood by the users. The aim of the proposed system is to reproduce the feeling provided by a traditional white cane, but using a short cane equipped with a smart system of sensors and actuators.

Bruno Andò, Salvatore Baglio, Cristian Orazio Lombardo, Vincenzo Marletta, E. A. Pergolizzi, Antonio Pistorio, Angelo Emanuele Valastro
A System to Promote Walking for the Elderly and Empower Tourism: The Sweet Mobility Project

Sweet Mobility—“System to promote Walking for Elderly Empowering Tourism and improve MOBILITY” is a project co-funded by the European Union and the Tuscany Region, whose purpose is to spur cultural-tourist activities and thus mobility also by the elderly and frail users. The project aims at developing a technological system through a smartphone based on a simple and user-friendly interface and a non-invasive wearable device specifically designed in order to detect vital parameters to be monitored during physical effort resulting from simple activities, such as a walking. This system allows to provide the elderly or frail users with a safe guide throughout specific chosen walking paths or tourist places, by pointing out, in the meanwhile, all of the difficult parts of the pathway, the possible presence of unevenness, architectural barriers, resting facilities areas or points of particular and unique landscape relevance. It will be able to detect and signal hazardous situations in the distance as well and to provide prompt, remote or on-site, intervention. This project aims therefore at fostering mobility for the elderly, by removing physical obstacles and barriers that often prevent them to allow themselves recreational and tourist activities. The project and its goals, the development methodology and the planned experimentation stages are here in detail introduced.

Gianfranco Borrelli, Massimo Pistoia, Benedetta Fruttarol, Casacci Paolo
IR-UWB for Ambient Assisted Living Applications

Wireless technology has been developing fast for years and it is spreading to new areas of everyday life. One of the newest areas is healthcare and welfare sector where it can be a significant way to save costs and improve existing procedures. The coming years are going to be challenging as the population, in the developed countries especially, is ageing fast and more patients are going to need treatments. Wireless sensor network (WSN) is an emerging in wireless technology for short range indoor used for health monitoring. On the other hand, the Impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) defined by IEEE 802.15.4a standard, comes with a number of desirable features at the physical layer for wireless communications, for example, low RF power emission, ranging, accurate position location, imaging sensing radar. In this work, the potential strengths of IEEE 802.15.4a for Ambient Assisted Living Applications (AALs) has been showed. Subsequently, an IEEE 802.15.4a RF Front-End, resilient to interferers, in 65 nm CMOS for AALs has been proposed. It consists of low noise amplifier (LNA), mixer, frequency synthesizer (LO).

V. Chironi, M. Pasca, S. D’Amico, A. Leone, P. Siciliano
Adaptive Reminders in an Ambient Assisted Living Environment

The G

iraff

P

lus

home environment represents a complete AAL system that gathers environmental and physiological measures from distributed sensors for continuous monitoring of an older person. A key point of innovation in the project is the synthesis of reasoning services on the gathered data. Among those services the personalisation of feedback messages to users according to both individual’s needs and continuous data analysis represents an open challenge. This paper paves the way with respect to this challenge by presenting a user-adaptive reminding services endowed with the ability to trigger heterogeneous messages over time. The messages can simply remind to take a medication, can warn that a physiological value is deteriorating, or even offer regular suggestions on “good quality of life behaviour” triggered by some observation on individual users data.

Riccardo De Benedictis, Amedeo Cesta, Luca Coraci, Gabriella Cortellessa, Andrea Orlandini

Smart Housing

Frontmatter
Advanced Solutions to Support Daily Life of People Affected by the Down Syndrome

Recent technologies applied or explicitly developed for assisting people with physical disabilities or weaker individuals needing particular attention, are becoming an emerging research topic. In this paper we focus on ambient care systems and we present an overall architecture that aims to provide multiple interfaces between a

smart house

and its guests. In particular we describe the results applied in the project Casa + , a smart house that is addressed to people with Down syndrome; it offers functionalities for monitoring the environment and its guests, giving indication signals, audio messages or even alarms in case of incorrect actions. Through exploitation of the most recent technologies, keeping in mind the trade off with costs, we developed the following functionalities: security, time management, assistance for daily activities, monitoring and remote control, outdoor tracking.

Roberto Alesii, Fabio Graziosi, Stefano Marchesani, Claudia Rinaldi, Marco Santic, Francesco Tarquini
Localization and Identification of a Person in an Indoor Environment Using a Low-Cost ZigBee Based Gateway System

The European population is becoming older and older, causing AT and AAL topics to become more and more important. A ZigBee based low-cost home automation system named CARDEA has been developed at the University of Parma, with the aim to permit elderly people to live their lives autonomously and independently. In this paper is presented a new feature: a gateway monitoring system which allows to detect crossing of a doorway or a predefined gateway and, if the person is carrying a wearable ZigBee sensor, to identify he/she. This technology could be helpful to control movements of a not completely self-sufficient person, to supervise the access to a particular location or to keep track of the person’s habits to possibly relate them to his/her health state.

Claudio Guerra, Francesco Montalto, Valentina Bianchi, Ilaria De Munari, Paolo Ciampolini
An Ontology Designed for Supporting an AAL Experience in the Framework of the FOOD Project

This work focuses on the design and the implementation of an ontology devised to extract knowledge from an Ambient Assisted Living environment, equipped with an Home Automation System. In particular, the design of the ontology is been carried out taking as reference the experience of the FOOD project [

1

], funded in the framework of the European AAL Joint Programme [

2

]. In the pilot installations of the FOOD project, a set of sensors was installed in the kitchen of the users in order to monitor the behavior of the persons, aiming to recording their feeding habits. The main part of the performed activity is the design of the ontology itself and, in particular: the identification of most important conceptual classes, the way to describe the concept of time within the ontology, and the development of a relational database that enables the interfacing between the ontology and the actual data provided by the sensors and collected by the Home Automation System.

Monica Mordonini, Guido Matrella, Mirko Mancin, Michele Pesci
An Integrated Approach to the Well-Being of the Elderly People at Home

The paper presents the outline and the preliminary developments of NINFA (iNtelligent Integrated Network For Aged people), a project for the well-being of the elderly people at home. This architecture is based on a service platform suited for elder people called the Virtual Village Network, whose user interface allows to deliver different services at home, namely: user supervision, communication and interaction among users for social inclusion, exergame delivering, monitoring of the wellness status. After the discussion of some results of the investigation on the acceptability issues of the ICT technologies related to the project, the User Interface (UI) and the novel Human Computer Interface (HCI) have been developed. The HCI is particularly suited for elderly people and motor impaired patients because the interaction is managed only by finger/hand gestures and by vocal control through simple commands. A set of preliminary exergames developed for the user training and monitoring are presented. During the exergame execution, the user interface allows the real-time acquisition of a set of motor, linguistic and cognitive parameters related to the user performance. The analysis of the verbal production of each subject is used to observe its language evolution and to detect the onset of any cognitive deficit. The relationship between some parameters and the neurological/wellness status of the user is discussed.

Giovanna Morgavi, Roberto Nerino, Lucia Marconi, Paola Cutugno, Claudia Ferraris, Alessandra Cinini, Mauro Morando
Smart Object and Smart House for Ambient Assisted Living: Design Concept

This project is the second phase of the research already presented in Foritaal 2013. The project consists of two specific parts: (1) The presentation of a Green Smart House System model made up of assisted living environments according to different levels of complexity, defined by its architectural and technological components, as well as furniture and everyday objects. (2) The presentation of case studies that propose projects for systems, components, technology elements, furnishings and objects of use for users with varying degrees of physical ability. The objective of this project was to identify the design elements essential to support new systems and methods of assistance, in the context of their own discipline of design, and to help users with different degrees of ability and/or disabling diseases. The project is based on the integration of the components of design products with innovative digital technology (ITC, AAL, home automation) in order to define new housing systems that are both integrated and interactive. This research project uses the definition of spaces, objects and components as its points of reference, designed in an inclusive (

For All

) and sustainable way that are technologically implemented with digital systems to assist in the daily activities of the user. The expected result consists of a series of concepts that can be developed and proposed as a progression of the current components available for this type of housing context.

Giuseppe Losco, Andrea Lupacchini, Luca Bradini

Elderly People Monitoring

Frontmatter
ADL Detection for the Active Ageing of Elderly People

The correct identification of Activities of Daily Living (ADL) is a fundamental task to implement an effective remote monitoring of weak users with particular regards to elderlies. In this paper a comparison of the performances of two different algorithms for the classification of ADL, developed by the authors, is presented. The first algorithm exploits a threshold mechanism while the other one is based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The threshold based algorithm provides reasonable performances in performing classifications between different ADL. Moreover the threshold definition mechanism implemented is flexible and adaptable to several different application contexts due to the use of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) theory which allows to properly define thresholds values on the basis of constraints on the system sensibility and specificity. Advantage of the PCA approach resides in the possibility to improve the system specificity in classifying different kind of ADL and a reduction of the classification problem complexity. The developed strategy allows for ADL classification with sensibility and specificity features in line with real applications in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) context.

Bruno Andò, Salvatore Baglio, Cristian O. Lombardo, Vincenzo Marletta, Elisa A. Pergolizzi, Antonio Pistorio, Angelo Valastro
Comparison of RGB-D Mapping Solutions for Application to Food Intake Monitoring

Food intake behaviours are strictly correlated to health, especially for elderly people. Dietary habits monitoring is one of the most challenging activity for researchers in AAL scenario. RGB-D sensors, such as Kinect, provide multiple useful data to perform behavioural analysis in an unobtrusive way. Unfortunately, when using the Kinect sensor, depth and RGB data are not available with the same point of view, and a mapping algorithm is required in order to associate a 3D point to the same pixel in both the RGB and depth frames. In this paper, some techniques for RGB-D mapping of Kinect sensor data are compared, and a proposed implementation is described. Some experimental results in specific conditions are finally provided.

Enea Cippitelli, Samuele Gasparrini, Adelmo De Santis, Laura Montanini, Laura Raffaeli, Ennio Gambi, Susanna Spinsante
Care@Home: Methodology, Goals and Project Experimentation Activities

The Care@Home project, funded by the Apulia Region, aims at developing an integrated system able to monitor and collect continuously vital parameters of the elderly or frail users in order to allow patients who require specific therapies or rehabilitation activities to perform them at home. By the means of ICT technologies and mobile devices simple to be used, such as smart phones or Tablet PCs able to carry out the monitoring activity noninvasively and assess the patient’s health status at the same time, it will be therefore possible to allow frail users to live as long as possible in their own home environment and to receive assistance in remote as well. Miscellaneous testing and experimentation activities and stages are going to be undertaken over the months to come in order to develop a first prototype consisting of a solution to monitor frail person and an electronic medical record accessible via the Internet from any remote location. Project objectives and initial results concerning the experimentation stage are here introduced.

Gianfranco Borrelli, Massimo Pistoia, Paolo Casacci, Alessandro Leone, Pietro Siciliano, Marina de Tommaso, Eleonora Vecchio, Marianna Delussi, Antonio Greco, Daniele Sancarlo, Francesco Giuliani, Cataldo De Benedictis, Nicola Savino, Paola Rametta, Vincenzo Molendini, Leonardo D’Alessandro, Gianfranco Spalluto
Combining EEG and EMG Signals in a Wireless System for Preventing Fall in Neurodegenerative Diseases

We present an innovative wireless wearable, low power, noninvasive neuroprosthetic system that is geared towards detecting and preventing falls. The system allows continuous monitoring of EEG/EMG, detecting in particular pre-motor potentials to prevent falls of elder and motor-impaired patients by introducing a feedback action to stabilize gait.

D. De Venuto, V. F. Annese, M. de Tommaso, E. Vecchio, A. L. Sangiovanni Vincentelli
AAL Technologies for Independent Life of Elderly People

Assistive technologies have the objective to improve the people quality of life of in daily living, with a special aim to those who suffer of physical disabilities or cognitive impairment, which may be caused by an accident, disease or the natural process of ageing. The present paper describes the main results of a study realized for the INTERREG IVC INNOVAGE project, where the domain target addressed are: home and building automation and assistive robotics. The project provides a quick overview of the typical needs of elderly people, describes the state-of-the-art technologies which can be adopted to satisfy these needs and presents a critical analysis of the functionalities, which present and future assistive technologies should possess. The result of this study is a detailed assessments of requirements and limits of nowadays domotics and robotics technologies aimed to improve people quality of life.

Flavia Benetazzo, Francesco Ferracuti, Alessandro Freddi, Andrea Giantomassi, Sabrina Iarlori, Sauro Longhi, Andrea Monteriù, Davide Ortenzi

Living with Chronic Conditions

Frontmatter
Giving Voice to Images: Audio Description and Visual Impairment: Technological Solutions and Methodological Choices

This paper proposes a reflection on issues related to Audio Description: an additional narration track intended primarily for blind and visually impaired people of visual. Starting from the analysis about the users’ needs, the paper proposes a comparison between three types of technology solutions, taking into account and evaluating, in a perspective of social inclusion and Ambient Assisted Living, their strengths and weakness.

Stefania Pinnelli, Andrea Fiorucci
Metabolink: m-Health Solution Enabling Patient-Centered Care and Empowerment for Well-Being and Active Ageing

Metabolink is a smartphone-based telemedicine solution that allows the proactive participation of elderly people or patients with chronic diseases to the monitoring of their own lifestyles. The patient uses a smartphone to collect and to send to doctors or caregivers information about his/her lifestyle or about physiological parameters measured using integrated medical devices. The doctors use a tablet or a computer to communicate with their patients, to check real-time their health, to receive alerts about unsafe health conditions and to update the treatment. The data collected by the patients populates the personal health records and can be used afterwards to find correlations between lifestyles and the onset or progression of chronic diseases. This solution empowers the patients for active ageing and enables them to easily cooperate with the doctors in the management of their wellness or chronic diseases.

Graziano Pappadà, Laura Scaringella, Romina Bisceglie, Nicola Modugno, Antonio Pacilli, Salvatore De Cosmo
Brain.me: Low-Cost Brain Computer Interface Methods for AAL Scenarios

A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is an alternative/augmentative communication device that can provide users with an interaction path, based on the interpretation of his/her brain activity. Such technology, applied to AAL contexts, could potentially have a major impact on daily-living, extending the ageing at home paradigm also to users with severe motor impairments, for whom the interaction with the surrounding environment is troublesome. In this paper, a low cost BCI development platform is presented and its performance assessed by means of an illustrative application example using SSVEP paradigm to switch on and off lights. Comparison against other SSVEP signal processing methods in literature is also made.

Niccolò Mora, Valentina Bianchi, Ilaria De Munari, Paolo Ciampolini
Alzheimer Patient’s Home Rehabilitation Through ICT Advanced Technologies: The ALTRUISM Project

The AL.TR.U.I.S.M. project—

ALzheimer patient’s home rehabilitation by a Virtual Personal TRainer

-

based Unique Information System Monitoring

, funded by the Apulia Region, aims at developing a home rehabilitation system through the implementation of a Virtual Personal Trainer in order to remotely monitor and support patients affected by Alzheimer’s disease in performing exercises and rehabilitation programs, autonomously and directly in their home environment. It is a solution aimed at patients with mild to moderate cognitive impairments and which makes use of advanced ICT technologies such as a set-top box with Internet access and connected to a TV, a camera with gesture recognition features and an electronic device able to detect vital and biomedical parameters. Moreover, this system is designed and configured to be used both in home environments such as nursing homes, user’s premises and apartments and in hospital facilities as well. This paper gets through the project goals, the experimentation stages and the initial results.

Paolo Casacci, Massimo Pistoia, Alessandro Leone, Andrea Caroppo, Pietro Siciliano
Smart Environments and Systems for Maintaining Health and Independent Living: The FARSEEING and CuPiD Projects

Home Control and Automation systems are often modular and offer the flexibility and dependability to make life easier. Wearable sensor systems for health monitoring are an emerging trend and are expected to enable proactive personal health management. Using home-based technology and personal devices the aim is to motivate and support healthier lifestyle; this is a challenge which has been addressed in the framework of FARSEEING and CuPiD EU projects. Contrary to visions that consider home automation and personal health systems as a mean to replace or to simplify the subject control and actions, in the FARSEEING and CuPiD approach smartphones, wearable devices, and home based technology are used to stimulate the user by making life mentally and physically more challenging but without losing comfort.

S. Mellone, A. Ferrari, C. Tacconi, E. Valtolina, R. Greenlaw, A. Nawaz, A. Bourke, P. Ferriol, E. Farella, L. Rocchi, H. Hawley-Hague, L. Chiari
Design of a Secure Habitat for an Enhanced Long Living: Case Study S.H.E.L.L Project

The present work has been developed from an accurate study on the Wearable Devices within the S.H.E.L.L. project (Secure Habitat for an Enhanced Long Living), led by the Department of Architecture in Genoa, which focuses on “Made in Italy” industrial innovation. The project seeks to create a new assistance system for mentally disabled people or people with reduced mobility (Stikic et al., PervasiveHealth 2008, Second International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, 2008) [

1

] using

S.H.E.L.L. Personal Kit: a Secure

Habitat for an Enhanced Long Living Personal Kit

, a series of environmental devices that should be stationary and easy to use and implement and a modular system. The aim is to turn them into mass products. The S.H.E.L.L. Personal Kit is made up of an smart wearable device, a tablet docking station and a series of environmental elements for localization and to receive/transmit data. The principal goal of the project is enhancing safety and autonomy for its users through automatic alarms, integrated in a wireless sensor net. The system can detect specific habits of the people that are being monitored, thus allowing them to move freely in their surroundings. It guarantees constant assistance by interacting in the case of an emergency and alerting family members or caretakers of any anomaly in the observed data.

Niccolò Casiddu, Claudia Porfirione, Matteo Zallio
Neurophysiological and Behavioural Variables in Cognitive Impairment: Towards a Personalised Monitoring System

The social changes and the population aging process increase the incidence of problems ranging from simple para-physiological reduction of psycho-physical and sensorial capacities to the cognitive impairment of different degrees. In this scenario, telemonitoring and telemedicine are useful tools for support, care and prevention. This paper shows how several clinical data can be acquired by personalized monitoring and used to evaluate in the follow up possible therapeutical results. Sleep modification that arises with the physiological aging process and in the presence of neurodegeneration were correlated to a dramatic reduction of the Slow Wave Sleep (SWS). These results improved the knowledge regarding the relation between sleep and wellbeing. Different ICT tools can be in perspectives considered within diagnostic and therapeutic personalized programs, i.e. Surface ElectroMyoGraphy, olfactory tests, wearable devices, sleep monitoring and metabolic characterization.

M. Giovanna Trivella, Alessandro Tonacci, Lucia Billeci, Vincenzo Gemignani, Amalia Gastaldelli, Angelo Gemignani
ALPHA: an eAsy inteLligent service Platform for Healthy Ageing

Dementia is one of the biggest global public health challenges facing our generation. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most frequent cause of dementia in elderly people over 65 years of age. The typical characteristic of AD is impairment of memory. As the disease progresses, other cognitive domains such as language, praxis, visuo-spatial and executive functions become involved, eventually resulting in global cognitive decline. Behavioral Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD) problems are constant in AD and have a highly negative impact on the quality of life of patients and their families. ALPHA project aims at developing an intelligent situation-aware system to collect and process information about Alzheimer Disease patients’ life style. Starting from various data provided by caregivers and a set of non-invasive sensors and devices, ALPHA will provide clinicians with new quantitative and qualitative information about patients’ abnormal behavior which, along with medical data, will enhance the accuracy and reliability of monitoring and assessing the patient’s health status. Clinicians will be supported by a suite of specifically designed tools and interfaces to analyze the metadata captured, improve management of personalized care plans and interactions with both patients and caregivers. Furthermore studies of antique records of a former psychiatric hospital will give the chance to widen the knowledge of behavioral disorders thus allowing to compare the ancient and the recently ones and to probabilistically determine relation between type of dementia and behavioral disorders.

Antonio Coronato, Giuseppe De Pietro, Roberto Guarasci, Amalia C. Bruni, Erika Pasceri, Maria Teresa Chiaravalloti, Giovanni Paragliola
GOJI an Advanced Virtual Environment Supporting Training of Physical and Cognitive Activities to Prevent Dementia Occurrence in Elderly with Minor Cognitive Disorders

Dementia incidence in populations of 65 years or over is about 9 % and doubles every 5 years of age and might be higher than 50 % at the older ages of human life, international epidemic studies foreseen dementia cases up to 48 million in 2020. Cognitive deficits affecting the person’s independence are main manifestations of dementia. The pathological process of disease precedes of decades the clinical manifestations and it suggests the possibility of early interventions in asymptomatic or early mild symptomatic individuals. This work presents the Goji project and its design phase of preventive program composed by a Virtual Environment for visuospatial (VSP) training and physiological evaluation of its efficacy.

Marco Sacco, Claudia Redaelli, Andrea Zangiacomi, Luca Greci, Simona Di Santo, Alessandro Leone, Alessandra Vezzoli
Training and Retraining Motor Functions at Home with the Help of Current Technology for Video Games: Basis for the Project

Chronic diseases are an international concern, for their increasing incidence and the strain on individuals and on healthcare systems. In order to enable the healthcare system to cope with increasing demands and to avoid strong decrements in subject’s functionality and well-being, a variety of changes for the management of chronic disease care have been advocated by the World Health Organization. The objective of the research is to verify the feasibility and acceptability of a technological solution that allows to transfer a tailored rehabilitation program for patients with disabilities in the home environment. The first step of the study is to identify the correct technological solution on the basis of the International Standard of Organization (ISO) definition of usability and acceptability. The second step is to verify the capacity of the system to perform correctly what is requested. The third step will be to verify the system efficacy in the patients’ training.

Andrea Giantomassi, Marianna Capecci, F. Benettazzo, Sabrina Iarlori, Francesco Ferracuti, Alessandro Freddi, Andrea Monteriù, Silvia Innocenzi, Paola Casoli, Maria Gabriella Ceravolo, Sauro Longhi, Tommaso Leo
Low Cost RGB-D Vision Based System to Support Motor Disabilities Rehabilitation at Home

Physical rehabilitation is an important medical activity sector for the recovery of physical functions and clinical treatment of people affected by different pathologies, as neurodegenerative diseases (i.e. multiple sclerosis, Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), neuromuscular disorders (i.e. dystrophies, myopathies, amyotrophies and neuropathies), neurovascular disorders/trauma (i.e. stroke and traumatic brain injuries), and mobility for the elderly. During the rehabilitation, the patient has to perform different exercises specific for the own disease: while some exercises have to be performed with specific equipment and under the supervision of professional staff, others can be performed by patients without the supervision of physiotherapists. In this last case, it is possible to reduce the costs of health and care national system and to accomplish the treatment at home. In this work, a computer vision system for physical rehabilitation at home is proposed. The vision system exploits a low cost RGB-D camera and open source libraries for the image processing, in order to monitor the exercises performed by the patients, and returns a video feedback to improve the treatment effectiveness and to increase the user’s motivation, interest, and perseverance. Moreover, the vision system evaluates an exercise score in order to monitor the rehabilitation progress, an helpful information both for the clinician staff and patients, and allow physiotherapists to monitor the patients at home and correct their posture if the exercises are not well performed. This approach has been implemented and experimentally tested using the Microsoft Kinect camera, demonstrating good and reliable performances.

Flavia Benettazzo, Sabrina Iarlori, Francesco Ferracuti, Andrea Giantomassi, Davide Ortenzi, Alessandro Freddi, Andrea Monteriù, Silvia Innocenzi, Marianna Capecci, Maria Gabriella Ceravolo, Sauro Longhi

Robotic Assistance for the Elderly

Frontmatter
Design of Cloud Robotic Services for Senior Citizens to Improve Independent Living and Personal Health Management

A cloud robotics solution was designed and initially tested with a mobile robotic platform and a smart environment, in order to provide health-care management services to senior citizens and improve their independent living. The solution was evaluated in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) and tested in the realistic scenario of the DomoCasa Living Lab, Peccioli, Italy. In particular, a medication reminding service, a remote home monitoring and a user indoor localization algorithm were outsourced in the cloud and provided to the robots, users and carers. The system acquired data from a smart environment and addressed the robot to the user for service delivery. Experiments showed a service’s Reliability of Response at least of the 0.04 % and a Time of Response of the same order of magnitude of the processing time required by the user localization algorithm.

M. Bonaccorsi, L. Fiorini, F. Cavallo, R. Esposito, P. Dario
OMNIAROBOCARE: A Robotic System to Ease Loneliness and Foster Socialization

The OMNIAROBOCARE project, funded by the Tuscany Region, aims at developing a technological-robotic kit prototype which is functional to the progressive prolongation of life expectancy, social assistance and home care for the elderly or frail users. This system makes not only an accurate and steady monitoring of daily life activities available to them, but it provides frail users with a system able to defeat loneliness conditions and to foster socialization activities as well. Miscellaneous testing and experimentation activities are going to be undertaken over the months to come in order to develop a first prototype represented by a solution able to support patients during daily life activities, enabling them to carry out their life in their own living environment and to remain independent as long as possible. This paper illustrates the project and its main goals, the analysis activities and experimentation stages.

Gianfranco Borrelli, Massimo Pistoia, Ludovico Fabbri, Paolo Casacci
A Smart Walking Assistant for Safe Navigation in Complex Indoor Environments

Large and crowded public places can easily disorientate elderly people. The EU FP7 project

Devices for Assisted Living

(DALi) aims at developing a robotic wheeled walker able to assist people with moderate cognitive problems to navigate in complex indoor environments where other people, obstacles and multiple points of interest may confuse or intimidate the users. The walking assistant, called

c

-

Walker

, is designed to monitor the space around the user, to detect possible hazards and to plan the best route towards a given point of interest. In this chapter, an overview of the system and some of its most important functions are described.

M. Aggravi, A. Colombo, D. Fontanelli, A. Giannitrapani, D. Macii, F. Moro, P. Nazemzadeh, L. Palopoli, R. Passerone, D. Prattichizzo, T. Rizano, L. Rizzon, S. Scheggi
Robot Interface Design: The Giraff Telepresence Robot for Social Interaction

This paper presents the outcome of the Workshop on Robot Interface Design, which was held in Genoa (Italy) over the months of January and February 2014 and was jointly organized by Polytechnic School at the University of Genoa and the National Research Council. The aim of the workshop was to study the design of physical, functional and graphical interfaces for a telepresence assistive robot, starting from the analysis of the current features of a commercial robot called Giraff (

http://www.giraff.org

). The fielding of the Giraff robot has been studied (within an EU-funded AAL project: ExCITE—

http://www.excite-project.eu

) in three different European countries as an ICT solution to support elderly people and to enhance social interaction with relatives and caregivers. The evaluation with real end-users of the Giraff brought to light a set of user requirements and issues to be improved in the robotic platform. This workshop sought to present the aspects connected to the design (in which participants had specific expertise), and to the users perception of the robot within a domestic environment. Particular attention was paid to the design of volumes, shapes and anthropometric relationships as well as elaborations on chromatic aspects and the exploitation of different kinds of material. Some of the main results of the workshop were: a design process involving different professionals such as designers, engineers and psychologists working in close contact with a group of end-users; a set of possible modifications/extensions of the robotic platform; a set of new design concepts featuring a higher level of product emotionality.

Niccolò Casiddu, Amedeo Cesta, Gabriella Cortellessa, Andrea Orlandini, Claudia Porfirione, Alessandro Divano, Emanuele Micheli, Matteo Zallio
Metadaten
Titel
Ambient Assisted Living
herausgegeben von
Bruno Andò
Pietro Siciliano
Vincenzo Marletta
Andrea Monteriù
Copyright-Jahr
2015
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-18374-9
Print ISBN
978-3-319-18373-2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18374-9