ACube

Improving the quality of life for the elderly and disabled through technological progress. That is the goal of project Acube. The project’s goal is to study technologies for monitoring complex environments that can be applied in areas such as assisted living homes to help personnel, as well as to support the independence and safety of users. Using distributed sensor networks it will be possible to monitor the areas of a rehabilitation center (e.g., an institution for Alzheimer sufferers) or similar facilities in order to detect events, situations, and activities even in complex scenarios with many people. The base technology is a distributed sensor network (DSN) for collecting environmental data, which is connected to a computing system able to comprehend perceived changes and to develop and appropriate response.

The major technical outcome of the project is the development of a monitoring system that requires the integration of a wide variety of heterogeneous technologies (video, audio, rfid, wsn, biomedical). The development of advanced algorithms to recognize events, situations, activities, behaviors in complex multi-person scenarios will enable the smart environment to understand who is doing what, where, when and how. This knowledge allows the system intelligence to take decisions (e.g. rising alarms). Processing includes adaptation capabilities, to fit different environments and users. ACube will need to configure itself automatically and operate intelligently according to the data it senses. In the future, the system could be exported to different application domains, such as the intelligent monitoring and surveillance of public spaces (museums, schools, stations).