Information and assistance bubbles to help elderly people in public environments

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is an emerging bundle of technologies and services that has been specially conceived to support disabled and elderly people to be more autonomous in their daily life. Support for mobility is a key aspect in AAL, and makes elderly people feel very independent and socially integrated. This paper describes an AAL solution to support elderly people outside home: provides information and assistance at the street near public buildings, and inside public buildings. The concept of bubble is proposed in this paper as a physical space where it is possible to consume to a number of local services. Presented mobility-based AAL Services are integrated with an ambient assisted home, so users perceive mobility service as an extension of the care chain beyond the boundaries of their homes.

I. INTRODUCTION

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) [1] suggests a model of interaction between people and their surrounded context-sensitive environment responding adaptively to user needs and habits. Technologies are embedded in daily life elements and present in the environment in a non-intrusive way, invisible but perceptible, accessed via intelligent but simple and natural interfaces. Mobile devices (PDAs and third generation phones), sensors, in-door localization systems, middleware and embedded computing devices on user clothes are some of the devices that can be found in this kind of environment.