Ambient Assisted Living for Elderly People Using Smart Personal Assistants

The demand of innovative solutions to afford healthy and safe lifestyle, for elderly people, are increasing lead by the growth of the ageing population and age-related diseases. Moreover, the availability of smart devices based on IoT technologies for personal environments has evolved the demand for tools to monitor and remotely control the home equipment. A new generation of remote control is available: Electronic Personal Assistants. These devices could be controlled using natural user interfaces, help user to simplify the interaction with home automation and other smart devices. The personal assistants use machine learning strategies to interact with the user. The solutions available in the market are often expensive and, moreover, are limited and legacy since based on proprietary hardware and software. This paper aims to present Alfred, a flexible and modular smart personal assistant based on low-cost hardware and open source machine learning software, in the context of the City4Age, an H2020 Project, to provide Elderly-friendly ambient assisted living.