Technologies for Ambient Assisted Living: Ambient Communication and Indoor Positioning

Abstract

In all industrialised countries, the population is aging rapidly as the average life expectancy continues to rise and the number of younger age groups grows smaller. Hence, due to economical and practical reasons, the elders of the near future will likely live longer in their own apartments, particularly because institutionalization is significantly expensive and there is not room for the entire elderly population in currently existing nursing homes. Even more important, nearly all people would choose to live independently as long as possible before moving into an assisted-living facility.<br/><br/>A longer period of independent living for elders can be enabled by technical solutions. In this work, two technology areas for assisted living are studied. First, the prevention of feelings of loneliness in elders living alone is studied, and a solution for social inclusion and remote presence is presented. The results of long-lasting field trials are presented and analysed. Secondly, as information regarding the location of the inhabitant in the apartment can be used to provide several assistive services, indoor positioning systems are also studied in this work. Several technologies for indoor positioning are presented and compared. Furthermore, a new system based on capacitive measurement and the results of testing of the system are introduced.<br/><br/>Technologies and systems developed here have been implemented into actual systems, and real end users have tested them over long periods of time. Thus, these technologies can be developed into commercial products with reasonable effort. Moreover, in this work it has been proven that the systems developed can actually be used to support the independent living of elders.