Detail Project and Funding

Abstract: The constant increase of the life expectancy and the consequent aging phenomenon will inevitably produce in the next 20 years deep social changes that lead to the need of innovative services for elderly people, focused to maintain independence, autonomy and, in general, improve the wellbeing.
In this context, this project aims at realizing services for elderly people to improve the quality of life by means of ICT solutions, both fixed and mobile (wearable and not), pervasive and with low invasiveness according to Ambient Intelligence (AmI) paradigms. The proposed solutions want to improve the sense of safety and comfort perceived by self-sufficient elderly in their home environment.
We aim at realizing personalized services which can guide people to carry out a healthy life style and to maintain their level of autonomy in different dimensions (security, mobility, memory, sociality).
The goal is to allow individuals to have an active role in managing their own health and in maintaining good health conditions by the creation of a “virtual” model of the person which reflects important characteristics that are specific of each one (e.g. personal profile, risk factors, harmful behaviors, tastes and personal preferences, eating habits, level of physical activity, sleep/wake rhythm, etc..) and can provide personalized indications by interacting with the individual to make her/him more conscious of unhealthy behavior.
The goal is to obtain a Personal Guidance to guide people’s behavior and habits for their benefit, their well-being and for applying preventive actions (primary and secondary) by means of gateways on the person (home gateway, mobile phone/smartphone, wearable dedicated devices) providing information (signals) which can help in changing the habits toward behaviors which prevents diseases or reduce their worsening.
The technologies we are going to propose are largely based on heterogeneous, distributed and connected smart-sensors, smart-actuators and smart-devices integrated into a scalable technological platform, which is context-aware and enables services to assist and monitor users in their own life environment.

The solutions and services proposed in the project will be designed using a user centered methodology allowing to realize such innovative products according to the specificity and habits of the users. Among them, multi-sensing solutions will be projected and realized for the prevention/detection of critical or potentially interesting events related both to the person (falls, unconsciousness, difficulty in walking,… ) and the environment (flooding, presence of gas and smoke, temperature,…).
INO-CNR contributes to the project with the development of optical (photoacoustic) sensors for the detection of small quantities of toxic gases, which can be dangerous for human health in domestic environments.

The Scientific Results:
1) Intracavity quartz-enhanced photoacoustic sensor
2) Cavity and quartz enhanced photo-acoustic mid-IR sensor
3) Quartz-Enhanced Photoacoustic Sensing of H2S
4) Intracavity Quartz-Enhanced Photoacoustic Sensor for Mid-Infrared Trace-Gas Detection
5) Quartz-enhanced photoacoustic sensor coupled with high-finesse optical cavity
6) Widely-tunable mid-infrared fiber-coupled quartz-enhanced photoacoustic sensor for environmental monitoring
7) High finesse optical cavity coupled with a quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopic sensor