A Smart Kitchen for Ambient Assisted Living

TLDR

The kitchen is a key home setting where Ambient Assisted Living can help, especially as older adults are prone to domestic injuries. The study introduces and evaluates a Smart Kitchen that enhances autonomy for elderly and disabled users via context awareness, user interaction, and AI. The Smart Kitchen uses a modular OSGi-based architecture that integrates diverse appliances, sensors, and interfaces, communicating over power line, RF, infrared, and cable, and was tested with 63 users and 31 carers in two living labs. Evaluation shows the system offers high potential, with strong usability and physical, sensory, and cognitive accessibility.

Abstract

The kitchen environment is one of the scenarios in the home where users can benefit from Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) applications. Moreover, it is the place where old people suffer from most domestic injuries. This paper presents a novel design, implementation and assessment of a Smart Kitchen which provides Ambient Assisted Living services; a smart environment that increases elderly and disabled people’s autonomy in their kitchen-related activities through context and user awareness, appropriate user interaction and artificial intelligence. It is based on a modular architecture which integrates a wide variety of home technology (household appliances, sensors, user interfaces, etc.) and associated communication standards and media (power line, radio frequency, infrared and cabled). Its software architecture is based on the Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi), which allows building a complex system composed of small modules, each one providing the specific functionalities required, and can be easily scaled to meet our needs. The system has been evaluated by a large number of real users (63) and carers (31) in two living labs in Spain and UK. Results show a large potential of system functionalities combined with good usability and physical, sensory and cognitive accessibility.