A Review and Classification of Assisted Living Systems

Abstract

Europe's social agenda for the "active elderly" is based upon a series of programs that provide a flexible infrastructure for their lives so that they are motivated, engaged in lifelong learning, and contributing to society. Economically speaking, Europe must engage in active aging research in order to avoid unsustainable health costs, and ambient assisted living (AAL) systems provide a platform for the elderly to remain living independently. This paper reviews research conducted within the area of AAL, and offers a taxonomy within which such systems may be classified. This classification distinguishes itself from others in that it categorises AAL systems in a top-down fashion, with the most important categories placed immediately to the left. In this paper, each section is explored further, and AAL systems are the focus. Entire AAL systems still cannot be fully evaluated, but their constituent technical parts can be assessed. The activities of daily living (ADLs) component was given further priority due to its potential for system evaluation, based on its ability to recognise ADLs with reasonable accuracy.Information 2018, 9, 182 2 of 24 ensure that future system features include the minimum requirements necessary for AAL research and commercial usage, thus ensuring that the elderly and their families have systems capable of meeting their current and future ADL needs. Previous reviews have taken different approaches, yet all failed to provide a framework within which all AAL systems could be classified according to their primary function [5,6]. Some applied specific guidelines to predominantly single-use systems, compared platform performance, or personalised healthcare systems. The evolution of AAL technology [7] has taken us through three generations, from wearable devices that respond to an emergency, to automatic response home sensors, to a third generation combining less-intrusive monitoring with preventive functionalities. Another review approach of surveying ambient environment services [8] under event-, context-, or device-aware services was categorised in terms of a service-oriented, user-centered, and event-aware monitoring service. This review technique compared various ambient services of response time, success rate, low/high-level failures, power consumption, and service reliability/adaption, yet offered no classification. A comprehensive literature review [9] on platforms and systems [10] provided no taxonomy for researchers, and excluded ambient intelligence (AmI) research that is pivotal within robotics and wearable computing. A recent review paper [11] described AAL as the culmination of the following five technologies: sensors, context awareness, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, announcing the importance of device interoperability, yet offering no template for achieving this goal. AALIANCE [12] proffered a roadmap for AAL system standardisation and a possible future evolutionary structure for systems, yet this aspirational template lacks the necessary structure to accommodate curr...

A Review of Internet of Things Technologies for Ambient Assisted Living Environments

“…The mean number of years since article publication aws 4.20 for all the selected. Most of the publications fell into the topics of engineering electrical electronic (37) and computer science information systems (35).…”

“…The analysis of solutions and applications provided by IoT technologies is summarized in Figure 4. In summarizing the applications, we follow the taxonomy of AAL systems presented in [35]. The taxonomy [35] identifies specific health monitoring systems, telepresence, ADL assistance, mobility assistance (positioning or localization), specific interfaces, virtual reality, wandering prevention systems, smart home systems, intelligent devices, fall detection systems, home automation, and robotic companions.…”

“…In summarizing the applications, we follow the taxonomy of AAL systems presented in [35]. The taxonomy [35] identifies specific health monitoring systems, telepresence, ADL assistance, mobility assistance (positioning or localization), specific interfaces, virtual reality, wandering prevention systems, smart home systems, intelligent devices, fall detection systems, home automation, and robotic companions. The analysis shows that interest in these research subtopics has been growing steadily with a majority of research papers dedicated to developing or using different kinds of sensors, smart devices, smart home systems and health monitoring.…”

Individual Behavior Modeling with Sensors Using Process Mining

“…There is a wide range of technologies such as RFID [38], Bluetooth [39] and ZigBee [40] among others. Such systems have been previously used to support the activity recognition of humans in smart homes [41], AAL solutions [42] and the design of activities primitives [43] In this study, an ILS based on Passive Infrared (PIR) sensors, which is an electronic sensor that measures the infrared light radiated from objects in the field of vision and are spread used for motion detectors is used [44]. Figure 2 presents an example of PIR systems.…”

Development of an Eye- and Gaze-Tracking Mechanism in an Active and Assisted Living Ecosystem

“…The eye-and gaze-tracking mechanism detailed in this paper is situated within the Active and Assisted Living / Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) discourse [1][2][3][4]. Its objective is to enable the user (1) to open, shut, slide actuable windows and doors as well as to turn lights on or off within an intelligent built-environment via sightenabled identification, selection, and execution; and (2) to extract and display personal identity information from recognized familiar faces viewed by the user.…”