Integration of Home Automation Technology into an Assisted Living Concept
Martin Floeck, Lothar Litz · DROPS (Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics) · 2008
A brief overview over a real-world Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) project in Kaiserslautern, Germany, is given. It does not only incorporate scientific re-search but also involves the prospective senior users right from the beginning. The authors’ perception of AAL is characterized as follows: The aspects of safety, comfort, health, and communication cannot be separated but need to be addressed simultaneously. To achieve this, only off-the-shelf home automation devices are used to limit the hardware costs. Every developer, however, should be careful not to overrate the capabilities of modern technology. To create AAL environments worth living in, social environments of the addressed AAL users must be identified and conserved in their new surrounding.