Issom David-Zacharie

Summary

Information and communication technologies have a role to play in improving a citizen’s quality of life. The ageing world population demonstrates the major challenge of assisting citizens in their various activities. ICTs could help them to have a healthier lifestyle, reduce physical efforts, reduce the risk of disease and prevent accidents or illnesses. PEACE aims to provide a system allowing the association of any type of sensors or data sources with any action within the user’s environment. The generic approach of this system allows it to be deployed in several backgrounds. Indeed, multiple purposes can concern home automation, clinical environment automation and progress in the Ambient Assisted Living field. Creating this system required focusing on multiple areas like user interaction paradigms, I/O management, security management systems and automatic services discovery. Developing this project has demonstrated significant future job possibilities. Indeed, the implemented use-case is applicable to clinical environments and to domestic environments. Furthermore, this opens the door to enable the realisation of automation in the citizen’s environment.

Introduction

The PEACE project has the ambition to become a system to assist citizens in their various domestic activities, including people who are healthy, with disabilities or illnesses as well as children, adults and the elderly. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have an important role to play in giving citizens tools to increase their quality of life. The UN has concluded that the increase of the over 60 population is an irreversible phenomenon and that seniors will tend, by 2050, to represent one third of the world’s population [1]. This fact is unprecedented, universal, far-reaching and sustainable. ICTs share the responsibility to sustain that. They become increasingly present in the everyday environment of people. Many homes have Wi-Fi access points, one or more computers and smartphones. There are computers everywhere, but not always in a coherent and unified manner. To be useful to each part of the population, these technologies need to be adapted, understandable and transparent to people. The elderly usually do not have easy access to new technologies [2]. ICTs should not be barriers, but aids in everyday life. The Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) programme goes in that direction. This is a European research programme aimed at increasing the quality of life for seniors. But the biggest challenge is to help not only the elderly, but also the rest of the population. The AAL programme comprises of systems for early detection of diseases, disabilities and domestic accidents [3]. Therefore, the impact on healthcare is not negligible. Moreover, economic stakes are raised as such systems can lead to a reduction in the cost of healthcare, for example, by reducing travel expenses, empowering people in terms of personal healthcare and providing them with more focused and efficient treatments [4].

Background

The University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) is the major care providing consortium of public and teaching hospitals in Switzerland. It covers primary, secondary, tertiary and ambulatory care, employs 9000 FTE’s and handles about 1 million outpatient visits and 50000 inpatients a year. HUG uses an in-house developed clinical information system that tightly integrates commercial systems covering all clinics and care. HUG comprises 8 hospitals on 4 different campuses in the canton of Geneva.

Objectives

The aim of the PEACE project is to create a generic and interoperable data acquisition-interaction system. The system must interact with a smart and person-centreed object and must be able to receive data from various sources in the real world. These “environmental sensors” may be temperature sensors, odour sensors, motion detectors or noise detectors, but also any other type of system producing relevant data. The idea is to associate the information event to one or more actions with objects in the user’s environment.

The operation should be possible with any type of incoming event. Any type of data must be understood and managed automatically regardless of the context or type of device connected and any command or action should be understood by the actuator. An object should be able to drive any connected object; this could be an electric lamp, electrical relay inside a house, multimedia device or software.

To be universal and generic, such a system must have features that allow many uses. Specifications may include both indoor and outdoor use. The prototype implementation focuses on an indoor use of Microsoft’s Kinect as a data source. Kinect is a device for the Xbox 360 game console who allows the detection of human gestures, as well as voice and the position in space.

Specific objectives are the following:

– define the state of the art

– specify the project

– describe conceptual architecture

– propose a use-case

– partially implement the scenario

State of the art

The main field is the Ambient Assisted Living. AAL is an EU programme, created to meet demographic ageing trends by using ICTs in an everyday environment designed to enable senior citizens to stay active, socially connected and independent [5].

The purpose is to use ICTs to improve the quality of life of older people by meeting several objectives. Some elderly seek a better quality of life, greater control of their lives to maintain their dignity. Several obstacles hinder the use of ICTs by older people. They often face a lack of accessibility, motivation or simply a lack of technological knowledge. The AAL also includes the field of robotics, devices used for decision support, care or rehabilitation. These technologies can also be used as biological sensors and be embedded in an everyday environment but also directly implanted into a human body.

ICTs can reduce memory troubles by providing reminders for medications or appointments, mental games to practice memory, or by creating appointments automatically etc [6]. Mobility can also be improved and monitored through GPS or vital sign sensors. Providing people with technology that makes them more independent in their own home avoids significant social costs, hospital expenses or the transport of staff. Moreover, these systems of domestic computerisation can allow people to have fewer and shorter nursing home visits, thanks to greater autonomy. Thus, institutions may avoid over-congestion. This programme therefore concerns various actors among the population, industries, markets, social systems and healthcare systems.

Thus, different issues are being pursued:

– maintain social life and a multifunctional network-helping families

– provide autonomy and mobility as long as possible

– maintain health

– to promote a healthier lifestyle

– preventing illness and infections

– increase resources to improve the efficiency of ageing societies

– improve personal safety

Therefore, we can highlight several key areas, health, inclusion and social rehabilitation, home support and personal safety.

This project also concerns the Smart Homes field [7, 8]. These homes are equipped with electronic devices, user-friendly interfaces, various sensors and devices integrating the objective of Ambient Assisted Living. A smart home is a house where IT is pervasive and interconnected. They focus on the achievement of several requirements and objectives and take into account current and future technological trends.

The objectives of Smart Homes are:

– To develop, innovate technological design and solutions in homes, including various sensors, monitoring devices, and Smartphone or multimedia devices.

– To integrate these systems and make them interoperable and integrated with one another.

– In the Ambient Assisted Living field, the integration of medical data into a coherent set of patient records.

– Develop algorithms and techniques for the early detection of disease and accidents based on models and patterns.

– Develop models based on information technology and communication encouraging the elderly.

– Analyse the ethical issues related to the integration of technology in the home and analyse the ethics of the surveillance of users.

– Analyse and evaluate the invasiveness of this intelligence.

– Improve the user’s social life.

– Assist the development of policy guidelines.

– Develop financially viable models.

These houses, where intelligence is ambient, are thus equipped with dematerialised data. Indeed, data and technology must be non-obstructive, non-intrusive and transparent. Smart homes are often equipped with different sensors including light, proximity, noise, temperature, kinetic and body sensors which also improve the interfaces.

All these home automation technology needs include multiple skills from many people such as: philosophers, ethicists, ergonomists, sociologists, engineers, computer scientists and security professionals who must contribute to this development to ensure a greater quality of life for the user. To be truly ambient, this intelligence must reach a point where the user is no longer aware of the use. It must be very integrated and hide its presence while being able to increase reality. In order to be useable without unnatural adaptation, this reality may be controlled by objects of everyday life with interactive increased capabilities.

Natural and organic interfaces, voice and movement recognition technologies, and eye-tracking technologies have reached a certain maturity and availability and it is now possible to integrate them.

To control these homes, some software exists. After comparison, we choose to develop the prototype with a new home automation Operating System (OS).

Microsoft Research is developing an operating system based on Windows 7 for the control of a holistic home, HomeOS [9]. This system provides intuitive controls for users to manage their devices. It provided developers with a layer of high-level abstraction to orchestrate the different devices of a smart home and this environment is coupled with a software online store. Through this store, users can obtain compatible software for their specific devices. The current HomeOS prototype includes support for electrical relays, cameras, televisions and wireless communications. This prototype is open to new application development and support for other devices so we choose this operating system to develop.

Specification

PEACE aims to be a system to monitor and streamline domestic life via an electronic device from which it will be possible to connect various types of peripheral interfaces to inputs and outputs. The goal is to give individual users or institutions concerned the opportunity to acquire a small computer, whose form is designed as a small box and this computer controls objects in a unified and personalised way.

To create this box, the first step is to know what the specifications are that we would give to this machine and for what purposes. The desired specifications are full connective capabilities, silent operation, low cost, low power consumption, ease of us, the ability to connect wirelessly and compact size.

The system architecture is defined to be a reusable and generic system where all kinds of devices and effectors can communicate and interact together [10, 11].

Each specific action in the environment should be possible and each specific data type must be recognised as generic. We need to define a generic description and behaviour, in order to consolidate all possible concepts.

We have to categorise the types of actions, and give them a generalised description. This approach provides considerable flexibility and a higher conceptual continuity [12].

Prototype

To develop the prototype, we choose a simple scenario. A use-case can be described as follows; the user stands; he reaches with his right arm horizontally toward the right and once the motion is detected by Microsoft Kinect, an electrical appliance is turned on or turned off. To send this command we choose a simple protocol, the Z-Wave protocol. This protocol, designed for home automation, controls compatible devices through radio waves and low power consumption. There are many different compatible devices and sensors. Furthermore, this protocol is compatible with the operating system HomeOS.

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Results and discussion

The prototype is currently functional and has shown that the conceptual model is viable. The implementation of more features, more hardware, drivers and protocols are planned for the future. So we had to cut corners and implement only the minimum necessary to achieve the use-case. Indeed, it was not trivial to understand how to send Z-Wave messages but documentation exists [13].

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This job is a small part of the purpose of PEACE, future work is still substantial. This is to achieve full implementation of the conceptual model and put this software into use in a small “barebone” type personal computer. Moreover, the field of home automation and Ambient Assisted Living is wide; there are a multitude of use-cases and possible future improvements. The first steps should focus on compatibility and implementation of different drivers for hardware input and output. Integration within HomeOS can be further increased and it is desirable that in the end it can become completely compatible. This is to ensure the software’s continuity and growth of its developer community.

Several milestones have been achieved:

– The establishment of the state of the art for the specification of the project.

– The design of the conceptual architecture for managing data flow and to control an actuator.

– The software architecture of the prototype that implements a use case using this architecture.

– The prototype that was developed to demonstrate that the conceptual model is coherent and workable.

The democratisation of home automation is a real challenge. This project would provide an inexpensive solution which is customisable and simple to configure. It might help to go beyond the limits of budget and avoid lapses in compatibility between different devices by implementing a system for automatic peripheral and device discovery. The automation of devices discovery is still an important challenge.

This project has given us knowledge of different technologies on the market and helped to highlight recent technology, Microsoft HomeOS. This technology can meet a need at a low price and is functional without large and expensive additional infrastructure and thus contributes to the emergence of connected homes.

Correspondence

Correspondence:

David-Zacharie Issom

Division of Medical Information Sciences

University Hospitals of Geneva

Rue Gabrielle-Perret-Gentil 4

CH-1211 Geneva 14

david.issom[at]hcuge.ch

References

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2 International Telecommunication Union, Measuring the Information Society. 2009.

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7 Smart Homes and Ambient Assisted Living. IMIA. www.imia-medinfo.com (05.02.2012)

8 Demeris G, Thompson H. Smart Homes and Ambient Assisted Living Applications: From Data to Knowledge-Empowering or Overwhelming Older Adults? Yearb Med Inform. 2011;6(1):51–7.

9 Dixon C et al. The Home Needs an Operating System. ACM. 2010.

10 Bhansali S. Reusing Software Design: A generic architecture-based approach. 1995.

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12 Zhu F, Mutka MW, Ni LM. Service discovery in pervasive computing environments. Pervasive Computing, IEEE. 2005

13 NT Johansen. Z-Wave Protocol Overview. Zensys. 2006.

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