Integrated careful homes for differentiated needs

Due to the ageing society, policy focuses on independent living of elderly in need for care. While the preferences of the elderly to live autonomously vary, there is limited information on variation in needs for the physical environment, e.g., shared and private places. A pilot study was done to develop insights into preferences for social and...

The Intelligent Built-Environment as Cyber-Physical System

Discussions of intelligence in the built-environment began in the late 1960s and early 1970s [1]–[7]. They belonged to a broader technical and technological discourse, engaged across a variety of domains and disciplines, to explore potential opportunities entailed by the Information Age. During this nascent period, and partly due to the novelty...

Health Care System Change Via Data Analytics To Enable Collaboration: The case of decentralised assisted living in the Netherlands

The gap between planning and budgeting is a problem for improving health systems. In decentralisation health care services, authority, resources, and responsibilities are moved from central actors (i.e. national government) to peripheral actors (i.e. municipalities). Adding the risk of creating silos within sub-national governments, creating the...

Developments of assisted living facilities for mentally disabled people from the interbellum period until present day: Towards the transition of assisted living facilities for mentally disabled people from healthcare institutions to a real home

Over the course of the 20th century, healthcare in general has seen many beneficial developments (e.g. medicine, procedures, hygiene etc.) However, when looking at assisted living facilities for mentally disabled people, a development towards an environment that largely resembles hospitals can be observed (den Duik 2015). Since the main purpose...

Assisted mixed living communities: Care and a social life for those in need of guided living

People living in a mental institution, eligible for early leave, can live independently again when living assistance is provided. When these people return to society they often do not have a large social network or a job. Assisted residents are mixed with students and starters. The students and starters help the assisted residents to make social...

Continuous human activity recognition for arbitrary directions with distributed radars

Continuous Activities of Daily Living (ADL) recognition in an arbitrary movement direction using five distributed pulsed Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radars in a coordinated network is proposed. Classification approaches in unconstrained activity trajectories that render a more natural occurrence for Human Activity Recognition (HAR) are investigated....

Phase-based Classification for Arm Gesture and Gross-Motor Activities using Histogram of Oriented Gradients

Micro-Doppler spectrograms are a conventional data representation domain for movement recognition such as Human Activity Recognition (HAR) or gesture detection. However, they present the problem of time-frequency resolution trade-offs of Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT), which may have limitations due to unambiguous Doppler frequency, and the...

Derivative Target Line (DTL) for Continuous Human Activity Detection and Recognition

In this paper, we investigate the classification of Activities of Daily Living (ADL) by using a pulsed ultra-wideband radar. Specifically, we focus on contiguous activities that can be inseparable in time and share a common transition, such as walking and falling. The range-time data domain is deliberately exploited to determine transitions from...

Elderly Care: Using Deep Learning for Multi-Domain Activity Classification

Nowadays, health monitoring issues are increasing as the worldwide population is aging. In this paper, the radar modality is used to classify with radar signature automatically. The classic approach is to extract features from micro-Doppler signatures for classification. This data representation domain has its limitations for activities...

Human activity classification with radar signal processing and machine learning

As the number of older adults increases worldwide, new paradigms for indoor activity monitoring are required to keep people living at home independently longer. Radar-based human activity recognition has been identified as a sensing modality of choice because it is privacy-preserving and does not require end-users compliance or manipulation. In...

Development of a Light-Tracking and-Redirecting System Actuated by Hand-Gesture Recognition

This paper presents a context-Aware light-Tracking and-redirecting system guided by hand-gesture recognition. It is conceived as yet another mechanism within an ongoing development of a more intuitive and technically sophisticated Ambient Intelligence / Active and Assisted Living ecosystem. The detailed system consists of individual nodes...

Development of an eye- and gaze-tracking mechanism in an active and assisted living ecosystem

This paper details the development of an open-source eye- and gaze-tracking mechanism designed for open, scalable, and decentralized Active and Assisted Living (AAL) ecosystems built on Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSANs). Said mechanism is deliberately conceived as yet another service-feature in an on-going implementation of an...

Development of An Adaptive Staircase System Actuated by Facial-, Object-, and Voice-Recognition

This paper details a proof-of-concept development of an adaptive staircase system-type capable of user-specific mechanical reconfigurations actuated by facial-, object-, and voice-recognition. The system is described via two variation-prototypes - developed at Technology Readiness Level 4 - as instances of the same system-type. Accordingly,...

St. Elisabeth Ensemble: Not just a brick in the wall

This studio revolves around the revitalization of Nieuwstad, a part of historical Zutphen. The project focuses on the so called St. Elisabeth ensemble: a living facility that is directly connected with a historical chapel and remains of a medieval city wall. The aim of this project is to improve the urban and architectural qualities of a multi...

AAL- technology acceptance through experience

Despite substantial research and development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies, their acceptance remains low. This is partially caused by a lack of accounting for users' needs and values, and the social contexts these systems are to be embedded in. Participatory design has some potential to overcome these issues, but still a high...

“The Desirable Scale”: Weighing social quality of as-sisted living facilities

Purpose In order to age-in-place, Dutch older adults have been housed in Assisted Living Facilities (ALFs) for over 25 years. Here they live independently but can rely on services and care facilities. The size of these ALFs ranges from 30 up to 300 residents. They are often considered to be outdated. Nevertheless, they continue to be built but...