A Semantic-Enabled Smart Home for AAL and Continuity of Care

The rise of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies provided the means to enable the smart home (SH), a residence aimed at anticipating and responding to its dwellers’ needs and one of the most promising Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions. However, the massive adoption of monitoring techniques and some shortcomings in the field of security can hinder the adoption of IoT-based SH solutions. In this work, we describe how we have addressed the challenges arising from the fields of AAL and continuity of care, by creating the Smart Human-Centred Living Environment Lab, an innovative prototype of a SH that can address the specificities of each inhabitant. The system on which the SH relies is a knowledge-based system that leverages the semantic representations of relevant concepts and data, thus allowing for the customization of services according to each inhabitant’s needs and preferences, without the need of continuous monitoring. A semantic middleware ensures the semantic interoperability of the information and thus the realization of an IoT-based architecture optimizing the provision of each service. Finally, digital applications and virtual reality-based systems are integrated in the SH to provide support to the activities of daily living and the execution of rehabilitative exercises, in the perspective of continuity of care. The system tries to address the issues of other SHs, in which privacy concerns, stigma, and ageism may hinder the use of innovative technologies in daily life. However, a few issues still remain: among these, the validation of the whole system in terms of users’ acceptance and the possibility of providing such a service on a large scale.