Meeting People’s Needs in a Fully Interoperable Domotic Environment

Abstract

The key idea underlying many Ambient Intelligence (AmI) projects and applications is context awareness, which is based mainly on their capacity to identify users and their locations. The actual computing capacity should remain in the background, in the periphery of our awareness, and should only move to the center if and when necessary. Computing thus becomes ‘invisible’, as it is embedded in the environment and everyday objects. The research project described herein aims to realize an Ambient Intelligence-based environment able to improve users' quality of life by learning their habits and anticipating their needs. This environment is part of an adaptive, context-aware framework designed to make today's incompatible heterogeneous domotic systems fully interoperable, not only for connecting sensors and actuators, but for providing comprehensive connections of devices to users. The solution is a middleware architecture based on open and widely recognized standards capable of abstracting the peculiarities of underlying heterogeneous technologies and enabling them to co-exist and interwork, without however eliminating their differences. At the highest level of this infrastructure, the Ambient Intelligence framework, integrated with the domotic sensors, can enable the system to recognize any unusual or dangerous situations and anticipate health problems or special user needs in a technological living environment, such as a house or a public space.

A Multi-Collaborative Ambient Assisted Living Service Description Tool

“…In [5] the authors first describe the technological architecture, being afterwards explained how user needs are met, not showing any specific modulation of technology based on user interest or taking into account other disciplines mentioned in this paper. Another example is [6], in which Unified Modeling Language (UML, a modeling and specification language used in software engineering) is used developing an interesting concept of famiWare, which gives a good description of contextual information and handling.…”

I Feel You: The Design and Evaluation of a Domotic Affect-Sensitive Spoken Conversational Agent

“…Within the field of ambient intelligence (AmI), researchers are looking for ways to make agents adapt to users on the “fly”, either to the latter's emotions (as is the concern of this paper), preferences [2,3], age [4], environmental health [5] or, even, IQ [6]. The motivation is that an agent that adapts better to users would hopefully lead a more effective, empathetic and naturalistic interaction.…”

AAL Platform with a “De Facto” Standard Communication Interface (TICO): Training in Home Control in Special Education

“…One of those is Unified Modeling Language (UML). In [ 12 ] the authors describe the technological architecture and over it they manage to meet user needs, not showing any specific modulation of technology based on user interest or taking into account other disciplines. Another example is [ 13 ], in which UML is used for developing an interesting concept of famiWare, which gives a good description of contextual information and handling.…”