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Independent Living for Today's Society: Understanding the Elderly and Disabled for Tomorrows Inclusive Smart Home Solution (Promoveo)
Start date: Nov 1, 2008, End date: Oct 31, 2010 PROJECT  FINISHED 

With a growing trend in the uptake of advanced ICTs to assist in everyday tasks; ubiquitous computing is an integral part of the modern European society. However, those who are either incapacitated or elderly are often unable to take advantage of the opportunities offered by ICT. The dynamic nature and changing demands of the future European society is inevitably going to have socio-economic implications - with social inclusion at the forefront. Home automation is a $1.3bn industry with an estimated market value of $10bn by 2010, however the smart home market is an area with limited flexibility for the changing European society. The current solutions are expensive and require extensive expertise for operation. The market itself is fragmented, with the dominating players residing in the USA and Middle-East, as are the contributing devices/interfaces to the technology with little or no consideration for differing needs and abilities of the end-user. The Digital Smart Home Solution (DSHS) is a home automation system that will act as the ‘glue’ to integrate third-party devices compliant with the EIB/KNX communication standards. It will do so by providing a low-cost server architecture – the central intelligence unit (CIU) – comprising of a physical server (interfacing the devices), a software-based service gateway with underlying artificial intelligence capable of adapting the system to the intended user(s) and environment, and a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI). Current limitations lie within ascertaining the system requirements of the disabled and elderly for such as system, as well as allowing the retro-fitting of third-party devices to become compliant with the DSHS. Furthermore, specific user-system interaction will need to be further investigated to provide ultimate user convenience.
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