Ambient assisted living buddy

Abstract

The research area of ambient assisted living is concerned with providing required assistance to elderly and/or disabled people in order for them to get through their everyday tasks and chores in an easy and safe manner. This usually makes use of hardware and/or software solutions in relation to the virtual I senior companion field of study. Additionally, ambient assisted living exerts a number of tools and resources specifically developed as technological aids for an ageing population. This project looks at the possibility of improving someone's quality of life through the use of an ambient assisted living prototype solution. By combining vital research aspects from the fields of: ambient assisted living, technological aids for the aging population, and senior I virtual companions, this project explores the development and evaluation of such a software solution, the Ambient Assisted Living Buddy. Once completely implemented, the Ambient Assisted Living Buddy is properly evaluated both at a system overall level and at an in-depth functionality level. This involved the collection of public user opinions and feedback responses through the use of two types of distributed questionnaires. In order for the results to be as extensive and wide spread as possible, the chosen candidates varied amongst each other in aspects such as age groups, living situations, and independent capabilities. Result extraction and analysis consists of inspecting the users' re-actions and first impression to the provided system, critically asking them about their experience using it and how they think it can be improved further. On the whole, the system performance was very well greeted with the majority of users stating that they felt safer using the system and would not hesitate to use a similar solution in the future. This implies that the Ambient Assisted Living Buddy manages to work correctly as a concept to ambient assisted living. Furthermore, this project proved that the possibility of improving someone's quality of life through an ambient assisted living solution can be effective and has a high potential.