HDOMO: Smart Sensor Integration for an Active and Independent Longevity of the Elderly

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the main results of HDOMO, an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) project that involved 16 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and 2 research institutes. The objective of the project was to create an autonomous and automated domestic environment, primarily for elderly people and people with physical and motor disabilities. A known and familiar environment should help users in their daily activities and it should act as a virtual caregiver by calling, if necessary, relief efforts. Substantially, the aim of the project is to simplify the life of people in need of support, while keeping them autonomous in their private environment. From a technical point of view, the project provides the use of different Smart Objects (SOs), able to communicate among each other, in a cloud base infrastructure, and with the assisted users and their caregivers, in a perspective of interoperability and standardization of devices, usability and effectiveness of alarm systems. In the state of the art there are projects that achieve only a few of the elements listed. The HDOMO project aims to achieve all of them in one single project effectively. The experimental trials performed in a real scenario demonstrated the accuracy and efficiency of the system in extracting and processing data in real time to promptly acting, and in providing timely response to the needs of the user by integrating and confirming main alarms with different interoperable smart sensors. The article proposes a new technique to improve the accuracy of the system in detecting alarms using a multi-SO approach with information fusion between different devices, proving that this architecture can provide robust and reliable results on real environments.