Integration of home networking in a smart environment dedicated to people with disabilities

Abstract

In this paper, we describe our research activity on the integration of technologies in the environment of people with disabilities who have reduced abilities to perform daily living tasks and who are usually using adapted systems, described as assistive technologies, to compensate, even partly, the problems of daily activities. This paper focuses on the process design of an accessible smart environment, described as the smart homes concept. This process design will cover our explanation of the use of smart homes technologies as appropriate solutions to support user needs. In this paper we will focus on the software infrastructure developed within the Smart Homes project which started two years ago and provides preliminary evaluation results on users needs in term of assistive technologies and highlights the role of communication protocols to control heterogeneous devices. This project1 is funded by the GET and the LLR foundation.