Detail Project and Funding

Abstract: The project BAITAH identifies ICT and Ambient Intelligence technologies as a useful solution to extend the time period in which subjects non-completely-autonomous can manage to live independently in a home environment. BAITAH intends to promote, ease and speed up the passage of Ambient Intelligence to the field of consumer electronics and informatics, making actually the involved technologies pervasive by identifying and removing current barriers to technology transfer. BAITAH proposes a systemic view that, based on identified needs and assistance procedures, defines Ambient Intelligence models in hich ICT technologies become pervasive and functional to the resolution of the defined issues. As follows the objectives that will be pursued within the industrial research project BAITAH:

• Strategic Objective 1: Define, by using a systemic approach, deployable methodological and technological resources, focusing particular attention on models of interaction between subject and assisted environment.

• Strategic Objective 2: Develop new technologies, injectable in a home environment, and the related services for supporting life of targeted subjects, by investing in the potential of modern ICT architectures.

Strategic Objective 1
Objective 1 is devoted to actions of methodological audit, carried out with the involvement of two major actors on the national level: the geriatrics Operating Unit of the scientific institute for hospitalization and care “Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza – Opera Padre Pio” and “FISH – Federazione Italiana per il Superamento dell’Handicap” (Italian Federation for Overcoming Handicaps).
The audit, carried out by developing a platform able to support the whole auditing process, will identify BAITAH platform stakeholders and their needs. This will enable to identify the scope within which to define Ambient Intelligence guidelines and protocols for supporting non-selfsufficient
subjects at home. In order to introduce technologies and services essential to offer this type of support, haptic, graphic and voice interfaces will be outlined as well as modalities of interaction and distribution of each technological object inside the environment to assist. This approach will lead to the achieve a software tool directed to the emulation of typical disabilities of targeted subjects, in order to allow designers to identify the main issues related to perception and interaction with the environment.

Strategic Objective 2
This objective aims at defining and implementing technologies that will permeate the environment to assist and services for supporting targeted subjects. Every element, inserted in the environment, will be a network node able to transfer information to a monitoring and control system that, through
predictive algorithms, will adapt the environment response to the perceived context and the needs of the person. All network nodes will be equipped with a dedicated communication interface for Healthcare applications and will allow to detect the air quality and the presence of gas within the
environment, monitor vital signs and events like falling over, find lost objects. The presence of mobile nodes will require the development of an innovative automatic localization system able to estimate the node positions. The entire BAITAH platform will manage to support targeted subjects
by interacting with them through a socially assistive robot capable of remembering people habits, reminding them of motor exercises, learning motor attitudes, recognizing their acceptance through facial/behavioural expressions.
In order to obtain these ambitious goals, the partnership of BAITAH will be supported with competences involved by significant ambient assisted living stakeholders such as “FISH – Federazione Italiana per il Superamento dell’Handicap”, “Associazione Abitare e Anziani”, “U.O. Geriatria IRCCS Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza Opera Padre Pio, San Giovanni Rotondo” that have specific roles of consultant in methodological studies. BAITAH has already obtained expressions of interest from ”AitAAL – Associazione Italiana Ambient Assisted Living” as reported in appendix 2 of this document.