HoTAAL: home of social things meet ambient assisted living

Abstract

Population ageing is a global phenomena demanding novel technological developments as a result of increased healthcare costs and wishes of older people to stay in their own homes for longer. Combining the ubiquity of Internet connectivity in homes with pervasive and intelligent sensors to exploit user interactions with everyday home appliances create the possibility to build a new generation of assistive technologies for smart homes. We present a demonstration of HoTAAL (Home of Things for Ambient Assisted Living) where appliances exhibit seamless social interactions with each other and older people to provide assistance with daily living activities, especially in meal preparation tasks. These technologies are unobtrusive and able to coherently interconnect with older people in a naturalistic manner.