Signal Processing Technologies for Ambient Intelligence in Home-Care Applications
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Editorial Signal Processing Technologies for Ambient Intelligence in Home-Care Applications Francesco G. B. De Natale,1 Aggelos K. Katsaggelos,2 Oscar Mayora,3 and Ying Wu2 1 Department
of Information and Communication Technology, University of Trento, Via Sommarive 14, 38050 Trento, Italy of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-3118, USA 3 Multimedia, Interaction and Smart Environments Group, Create-Net International Research Center, Via Solteri 38, 38100 Trento, Italy 2 Department
Received 22 March 2007; Accepted 22 March 2007 Copyright © 2007 Francesco G. B. De Natale et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The possibility of allowing elderly and people with different kinds of disabilities to conduct a normal life at home and to achieve a more effective inclusion in the society is attracting more and more interest from both industrial and governmental bodies (hospitals, healthcare institutions, and social institutions). Ambient intelligence technologies, supported by adequate networks of sensors and actuators, as well as by suitable processing and communication technologies, could be one of the enabling factors to achieve such an ambitious objective. Recent researches demonstrated the possibility of providing constant monitoring of environmental and biomedical parameters, and the possibility to autonomously originate alarms, provide primary healthcare services, activate emergency calls, and rescue operations through distributed assistance infrastructures. Furthermore, proactive systems help the user to perform daily activities, stimulating a more active and healthy lifestyle, and supporting functional rehabilitation and preservation processes. Although some products are already appearing on the market, several technological challenges connected with these applications are still open, ranging from the development of enabling technologies (hardware and software) to the standardization of interfaces, the development of intuitive and ergonomic human-machine interfaces, and the integration of complex systems in a highly multidisciplinary environment. The objective of this special issue is to collect the most significant contributions and visions coming from both academic and applied research bodies working in this
stimulating research field. This is a highly interdisciplinary field comprising many areas, such as signal processing, image processing, computer vision, sensor fusion, machine learning, pattern recognition, biomedical signal processing, multimedia, human-computer interfaces, and networking. The focus is primarily on ambient intelligence and home automation technologies, considered as basic tools to build smart environments providing advanced home-care services. The possibility of continuously monitoring the elderly and automatically detecting emergency situations
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