=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Technological and cognitive roadmaps for ambient assisted living
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-696/paper9.pdf
|volume=Vol-696
}}
==Technological and cognitive roadmaps for ambient assisted living==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-696/paper9.pdf
CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011
Technological and cognitive roadmaps for Ambient Assisted Living
Filippo Cavallo (f.cavallo@sssup.it), Michela Aquilano (m.aquilano@sssup.it),
Giuseppe Anerdi (g.anerdi@sssup.it), Maria Chiara Carrozza (carrozza@sssup.it),
Paolo Dario (paolo.dario@sssup.it)
BioRobotics Institute
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
Alberto Greco (greco@unige.it)
Lab. of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences
University of Genoa, Italy
Abstract In societal terms, AAL is focused to enable the
containment of the overall cost of assistance, offering
As a result of the continuous increase of ageing truly acceptable and usable solutions to the growing need
population, a growing number of frail and impaired people for personal assistance, mainly related to the steadily
(both in physical and cognitive functions) need assistance
growing cohort of elderly people, while increasing their
and pose dramatic challenges for the health and welfare
systems. The projects in the Ambient Assisted Living independence and ultimately the quality of their lives.
(AAL) field aim at developing intelligent systems able to In this context AALIANCE (“The European Ambient
provide personal assistance to elder and impaired people, Assisted Living Innovation Alliance”), a European FP7
allowing them to continue living in their familiar project ended in 2010, had the goal to create a common
environment and preserving as much as possible their vision of AAL that provides and defines the necessary
independence. AALIANCE is one European FP-7 project future R&D steps and projects on the way to AAL. It
developed in the AAL context established for creating a aimed at developing such a roadmap and strategic
common vision of AAL and developing a roadmap of guidance for short-, mid- and long-term R&D approaches
future steps and projects on the way to AAL systems. In
in the context of AAL. In this paper the AALIANCE
this paper the AALIANCE roadmap document is presented
and the main trends towards AAL are addressed, both from Ambient Assisted Living Roadmap document (Van Den
technological and human-centered (psychological, cogni- Broek et al., 2010) is presented, addressing the main
tive) points of view. trends towards AAL, both from technological and human-
centered (psychological, cognitive) points of view.
The AALIANCE Project The Roadmap starts with the analysis of the main
and the AAL Roadmaps trends towards AAL, analyzed from a demographic,
economic and technological point of view, and the
The industrialised world is experimenting a spectacular barriers for their deployment, identified for each
increase of ageing population, mainly consequent to the stakeholder of AAL, i.e. users and caregivers (primary
baby boomers generation crossing the threshold of stakeholders), organizations offering services (secondary
retirement. Such a change in the demographic structure stakeholders), organizations supplying goods and
will affect all aspects of the life, including a larger services (tertiary stakeholders) and organizations
number of frail and impaired people (both in physical and analyzing the economical and legal context of AAL
cognitive functions). In particular the risk associated with (quaternary stakeholders). The needs of elderly and
cognitive impairments is raising with the age and goes disabled people were studied and identified considering
with elevated social and economic burdens relevant to its the two fundamental aspect/expectations of the human,
chronic nature and to the progressive loss of autonomy. that are the autonomy and the independence in different
At the same time, while representing dramatic contexts of daily life.
challenges for the health and welfare systems it will offer Starting from these reflections, three main application
innovation and business opportunities for technology domains of AAL technologies were identified: AAL for
providers, fostering, among others, the development of Persons, AAL in the Community, and AAL at Work.
ICT-enabled assisted living paradigm or “Ambient These areas reflect the three fundamental contexts of
Assisted Living” (AAL). AAL refers to intelligent human daily life, that are the personal and health care
systems of assistance and represents a paradigm shift – in considered from the physical and cognitive aspects; the
society as well as technology – that will walk hand in participation to the Community activities; the work
hand with “human centered computing”, where the considered not only as means of economical subsistence
emphasis is on user friendliness, situation awareness, but also as instrument for the expression of the own
distributed service support for human interaction. personality, attitudes and self-fulfillment.
The AAL system through adaptive and distributed Unfortunately, physiological deficits and pathologies
user-system interfaces, body and environment sensor invalidate the autonomy and the independence of elderly
network and AI subsystems, is designed to be able to and impaired persons in these domains, causing problems
infer about the activities of daily life (ADLs) the user is for both the single subjects and their families and also for
carrying out and about the context in which such the Community that should satisfy an increasing request
activities are taking place. of services and support. Advanced technologies (ICT,
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CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011
Table 1: Application Domains defined in AALIANCE AAL Roadmap.
AAL APPLICATION DOMAINS
4 Persons (@home; @mobile) @ Community @Work
- Health, rehabilitation, care - Mobility - Collaboration,
- Safety and security - Social Inclusion cooperation
- Activity management/cognitive support -Entertainment and Leisure
- Autonomy / physical support
- Person-centric services
Ambient Intelligence, Ubiquitous and Service Robotics, for Ageing and Well-being”, Target C, should “...take
etc.) can be useful tools to help directly elderly people in into account work already started under the AALIANCE
their ADLs and to support caregivers and sociomedical innovation platform (ref. http://www.aaliance.eu)”
workers in their jobs. (European Commission, 2010).
The AAL Roadmap describes some realistic scenarios Several research groups are using the AALIANCE
related to the single application domain in which ICT and AAL Roadmap to address their researches in the AAL
technologies can contribute for helping and guaranteeing fields and service robotics in order to design and develop
people independence (see Table 1). Then technologies technological solutions useful and exploitable in society
and innovations that should be implemented to to support elderly and disabled people in their ADLs. In
accomplish these scenarios have been identified particular the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy) is
describing current technologies and the technological carrying out several researches related to AAL and
objectives foreseen for the short-, mid- and long-term and service robotics making reference to AAL Roadmap.
how academic and industrial S/T researches should In the context of the calls for experiments organized by
evolve to obtain them. This analysis was carried out the ECHORD Project funded by FP7, the Scuola
looking in particular to all main functionalities that Superiore Sant’Anna is involved in ASTROMOBILE
compose the AAL integrated systems: sensing, reasoning, project (Cavallo et al., 2010; Nepa et al., 2010). This
acting, interaction, communication, power supply (Table project aims at designing an assistant robot, starting from
2). the robotic platform SCITOS G5 (MetraLabs GmbH),
Furthermore, the document delineates possible able to provide some services to elderly people (such as
directives for the integration of technological support and monitoring the presence at home and the health status,
contribute in the service settings supplied by public and connecting the user with outside people, reminding
private service providers (novel service models) and also him/her about drugs to be taken and events, etc.), to
economical and legislative actions that the society should cooperate with users in executing ADLs at home, to
perform for introducing the AAL technologies in the interact with them adopting strategies similar as much as
community guaranteeing and preserving at the same time possible to natural human ones, and that can be
the safety and the welfare of all citizens. considered usable and acceptable by this particular target
of users. The ASTROMOBILE system foresees the
From AAL Roadmap to the Scuola integration of the mobile robot with a sensor network and
Superiore Sant’Anna research trends an ambient intelligence infrastructure. During this project
an extensive experimentation in realistic indoor
The AALIANCE AAL Roadmap has been considered
environment, that is DomoCasa living lab, and with real
by the European Commission as good guidelines for the
elderly people will be carried out.
development of novel European S/T researches so that
The project follows a User Centered Design
the Work Programme 2011 Cooperation, Theme 3, says
methodology and so it will involve the older persons,
that the next Coordination frameworks developed in the
through meeting, interviews and other surveys, since the
context of the Challenge 5, Objective ICT-2011.5.4 “ICT
Table 2: Summary of the main functions and enabling technologies described in AALIANCE AAL Roadmap.
MAIN FUNCTIONS AND ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
Sensing New sensors (health parameters, environment,
localization, etc.)
Sensor networks
Reasoning Ontologies
Event stream processing
Probabilistic reasoning
Event prediction
Acting New actuators
Home robots and mechatronic devices
Interacting Multimodal, natural, persuasive interfaces
Communicating New protocols and standards for communication
network
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CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011
beginning of the project, in order to address the design of interaction session with cognitively impaired elders.
the ASTROMOBILE system (aesthetics and appearance Starting from this study we claimed that such acceptance
of the robot, way to carry out the domestic services, should be considered as a multifaceted attitude, where
human-robot interfaces, etc.) for being really suited for affective, cognitive, and conative aspects have equal
elderly people and satisfying the users expectations. importance. In our opinion, the next steps in the cognitive
RITA is a different project, developed in the context of slope of a roadmap firstly include psychological surveys
Tuscany region. It has been conceived by researchers of planning, concerning the acceptability, and possible
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna coming from different implementation approaches,
research fields, robotics and law, that are designing novel (i) of a pervasive monitoring of daily activities,
ICT technological solutions to support and monitor (ii) of the presence of an AAL system,
elderly people living alone, and are investigating how (iii) of interaction with such a system.
these technologies can be exploited and inserted in the In fact, the presence of a continuous monitoring system
context of socio-medical services supplied from public may give some individuals a suffocation feeling; the
regional providers, and how to deal with both legal and possible negative effects of other components of an AAL
socio-ethical aspects. system must also be carefully scrutinized. And even if the
For this project a sensor network and ambient system is accepted, misunderstandings or deceptions can
intelligence infrastructures will be developed to monitor occur about its intended purpose or use. Willingness to
health status of old subjects, to localize them both interact also should not be taken for granted.
indoors and outdoors, to monitor the domestic The methodological tools for these surveys include
environments, to recognize potentially dangerous events standard interviews, questionnaires, (directed also to
and to activate alert actions for providing promptly help relatives), systematic observation sessions, related
to the elderly user. All these technological tools will be assessment tools, and also new pilot experimentation on
designed according to indications provided from real the field.
elderly people, their caregivers and socio-medical If this first line of inquiry is just aimed at collecting
workers, involved through the socio-medical service information, a second line to be developed concerns tools
provider of Pisa’s areas, that subsequently will also test aimed at attitude formation and change. A human-
the systems. centered AAL system must be part of a positive attitude
Moreover, the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna is carrying system. This can be developed by enhancing in potential
out other researches oriented to the robotics and ICT users:
technologies for “Ageing Well” because strongly (i) a correct knowledge about the system, not only
believes that the technology can help people to live better from the technical point of view but also concerning its
and is so advanced to be ready to be implemented in real general philosophy and purposes;
life because acceptable and safe. (ii) a positive feeling, obtained from a well-done
affective computing, able to correctly recognizing user
Towards a cognitive roadmap emotions, and to behave in an emotionally sensible way;
In AAL, products and services, provided by a (iii) a motivated intention to use the system.
heterogeneous set of disciplines, are based on selected We claim that this attitude can only be developed
standards that allow the interoperability of applications through interaction, where the system and the user
and designed in a user-centered way. The main objectives progressively adapt themselves and each other in order to
that should direct such a research effort are: from a achieve the final state, where the user has built an
personal view, to allow impaired people to continue increasingly positive attitude, as explained above, and the
living in their familiar environment; from a social point system has built an increasingly refined user model.
of view, to reduce assistance costs.
In the first phase technological aspects have been User model
mainly addressed. There are, however, a number of issues The user model is a key concept in this context. It can
to be raised from a human-centered perspective: be developed as a set of general frames, available at the
psychological, cognitive, social, etc. In particular, in the start as a standard toolkit, to be tailored and customized
present section we would like to emphasize some on the way to the user needs, through interactive
psychological and cognitive points that should be learning. Each frame should include general expectations
integrated with the technological guidelines in the next concerning a different area, belonging to the different
developments. Such approach belongs to the cognitive enabling technologies for AAL. In order to establish
science domain, because the contribution of different these expectations, an assumption of normality could be
disciplines is needed. the right starting point. In other words, the model could
start with the default assumption that a user has a
Acceptance and attitudes particular skill unless the contrary is proved, possibly in
The first implication is about the psychological test situations.
acceptance of an artificial companion. In a previous work We shall consider now some technological aspects
(Greco, Anerdi, Rodriguez, 2009) we conducted a specified by the Roadmap (see Table 2). The next
preliminary empirical study in order to assess the mentioned functional components should neither be
acceptance of an animaloid robot during a simple conceived as standalone mechanisms carrying out
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CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011
computations for their own use, nor just as replacement recognizing where the user deficits lie. And this should
or improvement devices for faulty intellective processes be done dynamically, because such deficits are not fixed
and resources. Each of them, instead, must be designed as once for all, but can change with time and contexts.
a true subsystem devised to interact with the user in order
to build a personalized model of this particular person. Acting
It is based on sensor-motors (e.g., cognitive robots) and
Sensing actuators that, based on their perception of the
Sensors are planned to be placed everywhere, in-body or environment, on behalf of their users and on information
on-body, in-appliance or on-appliance, or in the gathered by some other device and/or background
environment (see Figure 1). The user also, on his part, knowledge, could perform concrete actions. These agents
has a sensing system, and both systems should interact. In should be able to learn the personal habits of the user,
the technical Roadmap much attention is correctly posed that make him/her different from other users, and also
to the requirement that sensors be seamless, integrated, individual styles, that often make the same person to
less disturbing as possible. It is also important to realize, perform the same thing differently. It should be able also
however, that the huge potential quantity of information to detect which actions are performed as automatic or
conveyed by a complex network of sensory systems is controlled processes.
not seamless from the cognitive point of view, and that
more and more complex links with high-level processes Interacting and Communicating
are needed, so that truly relevant features in context are An intelligent interaction with systems and services is
selected. The fundamental problem here is how to shape devised, in order to cope with the abilities of users.
a potentially very rich model to be “aware” of the Sensors and actuators are connected to one or more
personal limitations of a specific user. reasoning systems that in turn might be connected (even
dynamically, e. g. a person moving from home to a
Reasoning vehicle and then to some public space) to other reasoning
It concerns aggregating, processing and analyzing data, systems, possibly with their own sensors and actuators.
transforming it into knowledge within different and often One important point concerns here the development of
cross-connected spaces (body, home, vehicle, public suitable interfaces, which may be difficult for cognitively
spaces). These processes, in fact, may assume a function impaired people. It may be obvious that an interface
that can integrate some well known deficits in verbal and should be as more humanlike as possible. This is not only
visuospatial cognitive capabilities: attending relevant task because elders often lack technical or computing systems
aspects and inhibiting irrelevant ones, dealing with knowledge, but also because they should not consider it
cognitive workload in complex environments (Newell et as a mechanical device, but as a tool that works similarly
al., 2008). and extends their natural and usual communication with
Higher levels of reasoning, as illustrated in Figure 1, people relevant in their life. In this vein, as an example,
concern categorization of user activities and situation the development of gesture-based commands is worth to
recognition. To this purpose, a cognitive task analysis be pursued. It can be used, in part, also as a mediating
may be useful to help identify critical steps in action tool for establishing a real communication system with
performance. Here, again, the aim is not to reach a family.
representation of the ideal performance, but exactly
Figure 1: Sensing and Reasoning Roadmap (Van Den Broek, Cavallo, Wehrmann, 2010).
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CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011
Conclusion
In this paper we have presented the AALIANCE References
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