Smart House Assistive Technologies for Senior Citizens

A Smart house is a special type of house that has automated services it offers to its residents to enhance their comfortability. Smart houses can implement for various purposes including luxury automation capability, entertainment, security, mitigation of disability, health, or medical reasons. In this paper, a special smart house design prototype for senior citizens is proposed. The design is proposed to have assistive technologies services easily added to or removed from the smart house. Depending on the need, a service could be added, modified, or removed with little effort. The complexity of service can be extended or limited based on the requirements of the subject senior citizen. Some of the service offerings in this house include; (a) security services, for instance in case of a fire, a fall detection, or a sharp rise in fever symptoms, an alert distress signal would be sent to the caregivers center; (b) action execution services, for example, automated preparation of bathwater, preparation of breakfast, preparation of dinner, switching lights on or off, etc.; (c) interactive services, for instance, remainders for medicine taking schedule, prompt of beverage choice, prompt to send distress signal when possible danger is detected by the system, etc. The comprehensive design would have four main modules: smart house automated services, assistive technologies services, privacy policy protocol, and security services. The design has been developed and would be implemented in the future.