Automated Classification of Normal Control and Early-Stage Dementia Based on Activities of Daily Living (ADL) Data Acquired from Smart Home Environment

Application of artificial intelligence in active assisted living for aging population in real-world setting with commercial devices - A scoping review

BACKGROUND

The aging population is steadily increasing, posing new challenges and opportunities for healthcare systems worldwide. Technological advancements, particularly in commercially available Active Assisted Living devices, offer a promising alternative. These readily accessible products, ranging from smartwatches to home automation systems, are often equipped with Artificial Intelligence capabilities that can monitor health metrics, predict adverse events, and facilitate a safer living environment. However, there is no review exploring how Artificial Intelligence has been integrated into commercially available Active Assisted Living technologies, and how these devices monitor health metrics and provide healthcare solutions in a real-world environment for healthy aging. This review is essential because it fills a knowledge gap in understanding AI's integration in Active Assisted Living technologies in promoting healthy aging in real-world settings, identifying key issues that require to be addressed in future studies.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this overview is to outline current understanding, identify potential research opportunities, and highlight research gaps from published studies regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence in commercially available Active Assisted Living technologies that assists older individuals aging at home.

METHODS

A comprehensive search was conducted in six databases-PubMed, CINAHL, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, ACM Digital Library, and Web of Science-to identify relevant studies published over the past decade from 2013 to 2024. Our methodology adhered to the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews to ensure rigor and transparency throughout the review process. After applying predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria on 825 retrieved articles, a total of 64 papers were included for analysis and synthesis.

RESULTS

Several trends emerged from our analysis of the 64 selected papers. A majority of the work (39/64, 61%) was published after the year 2020. Geographically, most of the studies originated from East Asia and North America (36/64, 56%). The primary application goal of Artificial Intelligence in the reviewed literature was focused on activity recognition (34/64, 53%), followed by daily monitoring (10/64, 16%). Methodologically, tree-based and neural network-based approaches were the most prevalent Artificial Intelligence algorithms used in studies (32/64, 50% and 31/64, 48% respectively). A notable proportion of the studies (32/64, 50%) carried out their research using specially designed smart home testbeds that simulate the conditions in real-world. Moreover, ambient technology was a common thread (49/64, 77%), with occupancy-related data (such as motion and electrical appliance usage logs) and environmental sensors (indicators like temperature and humidity) being the most frequently used.

CONCLUSION

Our results suggest that Artificial Intelligence has been increasingly deployed in the real-world Active Assisted Living context over the past decade, offering a variety of applications aimed at healthy aging and facilitating independent living for the older adults. A wide range of smart home indicators were leveraged for comprehensive data analysis, exploring and enhancing the potentials and effectiveness of solutions. However, our review has identified multiple research gaps that need further investigation. First, most research has been conducted in controlled testbed environments, leaving a lack of real-world applications that could validate the technologies' efficacy and scalability. Second, there is a noticeable absence of research leveraging cloud technology, an essential tool for large-scale deployment and standardized data collection and management. Future work should prioritize these areas to maximize the potential benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Active Assisted Living settings.

Human Action Recognition in Smart Living Services and Applications: Context Awareness, Data Availability, Personalization, and Privacy

Smart living, an increasingly prominent concept, entails incorporating sophisticated technologies in homes and urban environments to elevate the quality of life for citizens. A critical success factor for smart living services and applications, from energy management to healthcare and transportation, is the efficacy of human action recognition (HAR). HAR, rooted in computer vision, seeks to identify human actions and activities using visual data and various sensor modalities. This paper extensively reviews the literature on HAR in smart living services and applications, amalgamating key contributions and challenges while providing insights into future research directions. The review delves into the essential aspects of smart living, the state of the art in HAR, and the potential societal implications of this technology. Moreover, the paper meticulously examines the primary application sectors in smart living that stand to gain from HAR, such as smart homes, smart healthcare, and smart cities. By underscoring the significance of the four dimensions of context awareness, data availability, personalization, and privacy in HAR, this paper offers a comprehensive resource for researchers and practitioners striving to advance smart living services and applications. The methodology for this literature review involved conducting targeted Scopus queries to ensure a comprehensive coverage of relevant publications in the field. Efforts have been made to thoroughly evaluate the existing literature, identify research gaps, and propose future research directions. The comparative advantages of this review lie in its comprehensive coverage of the dimensions essential for smart living services and applications, addressing the limitations of previous reviews and offering valuable insights for researchers and practitioners in the field.

Global Research Trends on Smart Homes for Older Adults: Bibliometric and Scientometric Analyses

A growing aging population across the world signifies the importance of smart homes equipped with appropriate technology for the safety and health of older adults. Well-designed smart homes can increase the desire of older adults' aging-in-place and bring economic benefits to the country by reducing budgets for care providers. To obtain a structural overview and provide significant insights into the characteristics of smart homes for older adults, this study conducted bibliometric and scientometric analyses. We used the Web of Science Core Collection database, searching for keywords "smart home*", "home automation", or "domotics" with terms related to older adults, resulting in a total of 1408 documents. VOSviewer software was used to map and visualize the documents. The results showed that research on smart homes for older adults began appearing from 1997 and increased steadily, peaking from 2015. The main research areas were technical engineering fields, such as computer science and engineering, telecommunications with minimal research in humanities, social sciences, and design, indicating the necessity to expand research toward a human-centered perspective, age-friendly technology, and convergence study.