Component-Based Hybrid Reference Architecture for Managing Adaptable Embedded Software Development

Abstract

The main objective of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is to offer high performance and easier ways of personalized services, such as health monitoring, mobility training devices, and socially assistive technologies (ATs). Nowadays, the ageing population, the high costs for the individual treatment in nursing homes, and the importance that the individuals increasingly necessary to be self-supporting all motivate development of intelligent hardware (i.e. ATs) for safe and independent living. However, AAL related to ambient intelligence (AmI), together with the wide spectrum of ATs, is too heterogeneous and hence difficult to handle. In this context, managing the adaptable embedded software development has become more important, which provides guidance for the organization of a software system including the set of significant decisions, the selection of the structural elements, their relationships to each other, and composition of these elements into progressively larger subsystems, etc. In this chapter, we centre our attention from the perspective of computer science, particularly, we focus on the proposal of software reference architecture (SRA) for the development, standardization, and evolution of system architectures of AAL. The main aim of this work tends to justify that how embedded software development can be better managed via the proposed approach. The ultimate goal would be trans-domain applicability of the adaptable embedded software system.