What Characterizes Safety of Ambient Assisted Living Technologies?

Abstract

Ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies aim at increasing an individual’s safety at home by early recognizing risks or events that might otherwise harm the individual. A clear definition of safety in the context of AAL is still missing and facets of safety still have to be shaped. The objective of this paper is to characterize the facets of AAL-related safety, to identify opportunities and challenges of AAL regarding safety and to identify open research issues in this context. Papers reporting aspects of AAL-related safety were selected in a literature search. Out of 395 citations retrieved, 28 studies were included in the current review. Two main facets of safety were identified: user safety and system safety. System safety concerns an AAL system’s reliability, correctness and data quality. User safety reflects impact on physical and mental health of an individual. Privacy, data safety and security issues, sensor quality and integration of sensor data, as well as technical failures of sensors and systems are reported challenges. To conclude, there is a research gap regarding methods and metrics for measuring user and system safety in the context of AAL technologies.