Approaching ambient intelligent home care systems

Ambient Intelligence based home care systems (AHCS) have the potential to overcome problems current home care systems are facing with. On the downside, engineering full-fledged AHCS is a non-trivial task, and convincing solutions are still lacking. Current approaches still are focused mainly on technology rather than the user perspective and fail to address usability issues. Additionally, most solutions have a narrow focus, are not context-aware, and have difficulties to integrate with other living assistance solutions. This results in reduced assistance. In this paper, we (i) motivate the application of Ambient Intelligence technology for home care systems and identify shortcomings of current solutions, (ii) outline an integrated system approach to full-fledged AHCS, and (iii) introduce the amiCA system