Ambient Intelligence by ATML Rules in BackHome

Applying ambient intelligence to assistive technologies and remote monitoring systems is a challenging task, especially in the field of healthcare. In this chapter, we focus on how ambient intelligence has been implemented within the telemonitoring and home support system developed in BackHome, an EU project that aims to study the transition from the hospital to the home for people with disabilities. The proposed solution adopts a rule-based approach to handle efficiently the system adaptation, personalization, alarm triggering, and control over the environment. Rules are written in a suitable formal language, defined within the project, and can be automatically generated by the system taking into account dynamic context conditions and user’s habits and preferences. Moreover, they can be manually defined by therapists and caregivers to address specific needs. In this chapter, we also present the concept of “virtual device”, which is a software element that mashes together information from two or more sensors in order to make some inference and provide new information. The abstraction of sensor information creates a powerful layered system, which provides a simpler, more readable and more natural description of the rules. Thanks to the proposed solution, end-users can rely on the automatic customization of their user interfaces according to their context and preferences; caregivers can personalize the system to the user’s need; and therapists can monitor user’s activities easily and can be informed as soon as an alarm is triggered or an anomaly detected.