Assistive “Wearables” for People with Disabilities. WorkShop HY-335 Stavros Dagkalakis Login: dagalakis AM:2790

People With Disabilities : Blind or with sight problems. Deaf or with hard of hearing. With movement disabilities. With mental mental retardation or learning difficulties. With mental illness. Epileptics.

Problems People with Disabilities Face Most problems People with Disabilities face originate from the fact that the world is designed for “normal” people. This causes serious accessibility problems , to places and information. Also the fact that in many cases they need the care of a caretaker and his presence at all time and places is also a major disadvantage.

Care of people with disabilities

Care of people with disabilities Traditional methods include the constant monitoring of the person, with the caretaker taking with biometrics such as temperature heart pulses etc. But this causes some problems because it may be expensive if the caretaker is a professional or time consuming if the caretaker is a person from the family of the person with the disability.

Our System, our solution. Our system is a simple combination of smart wearables and a AmI environment. The wearables monitor the user (person with disabilities) and the environment changes to much the user preferences and needs.

Wearables The term wearables refers to products that can be worn by the user and include some sort of smart technology to monitor the user in a manner, that is distinctive and non intrusive. A great example would be a bracelet constructed by a famous sports company that monitors your heartbeat when exercising and gives you a graph of your performance.

Ambient intelligence (ΑmI) Ambient intelligence environment term refers to, environments that use smart technologies to detect changes to the user environment and adapt the environment to match the user’s preferences. The AmI environment uses sensors to detect the changes and thus these sensors need to interact and communicate. This is where our system will use a server client protocol to distribute the data from the database and distribute the changes that need to be done. But this is only the beginning.

Example In this example the file server contains the user profile and the system preferences and code. The intelligence to detect changes and take action. Where the clients represent the devices in the environment and the wearables that the user may be wearing. The environment (home for this example) receives from the wrist band that the user has high temperature compared to the room he is in , thus it concludes that the user has fever. It alerts a designated caretaker or take some other action the user has pre-set for this occasion.

System Architecture The system consists of a server, a database and some clients Server : keeps the users profile and preferences. The servers and clients use a TCP protocol to transfer the data from the database or the actions that need to be taken. Database: Keeps the data that are collected from the sensors and wearables, the state of each device and the user profile. Clients: Wearables, environment sensors possibly an application on a smart mobile or desktop. Client sent queries to the server to request data from the database or instruction on how to act on a certain occasion.

Client Server Diagram

System Evaluation The system evaluation consists of 4 phases: Create a prototype and test client server connections and environment responses . First user evaluation create personas and make users “act” as a person with disabilities. Second user evaluation use users with disabilities and test the system under the guidance and monitoring of a caretaker. Ask users with disabilities to keep and test the system on daily bases and keep notes of anything they don’t like at the end of a pre-set time period we evaluate the system and correct mistakes that come up.

References HY-335a ΗΥ335-Δίκτυα Υπολογιστών Άτοµα µε Αναπηρία (ΑµεΑ) & Βιβλιοθήκες Για το ποια άτομα θεωρούνται άτομα με άναπηρια. Ε.Σ.Α.μεΑ. - ΑΡΧΙΚΗ Wireless Sensor Network Based Smart Home Applications ... Παράδειγμα περιβάλλοντος με διάχυτη νοημοσύνη