In today’s world technology is king and its impact immeasurable. Drs Roberto Baldoni, Massimo

Mecella and Christoph Guger discuss the smart technology they have developed, which is set to

have an immeasurable impact on the homes and lives of disabled and elderly people

Smart ideas

To begin, could you describe the purpose of the ‘Smart hoMes for all’ (SM4all) project and your long-term goals?

RB: SM4all has the ambitious goal of boosting and structuring the cyber intelligence that surrounds us at home in order to make our lives simpler. The basic idea is to bring together all devices present in a house and coordinate their activities automatically in order to execute complex tasks that involve many appliances (such as preparing a bath, creating a certain mood in a room, following a video, saving energy, closing the house, etc.). Inhabitants can both interact and programme, in a simple way, the intelligent house through a number of user devices such as the iPads and smartphones.

The project has been able to develop specifi c demonstrations using Brain Computer Interface. This technology allows the user to interact with the SM4all environment using brain waves, without touching any input device. The user simply concentrates on a specifi c icon shown on a screen in order to initiate the action.

Who will benefi t most from your technology? Could you provide an example of how they will benefi t?

MM: The technology, based on the pillar concept of service-oriented architecture, enables the creation of smart environments, ranging from houses to entire buildings. In a follow-up project, for example, we are utilising this research to control energy in buildings.

The benefi ts can therefore be seen in terms of both smart space vendors/creators – who can employ this technology in their products – and also fi nal users, able to enjoy better spaces, in which they are

seamlessly immersed.

Could you elaborate on the project’s partnership with Guger Technologies OEG and the contributions it has made to SM4all?

CG: Guger Technologies has been producing Brain Computer Interface (BCI) systems since 1999, selling this technology in more than 60 countries. For SM4all, Guger Technologies developed a much smaller and easier BCI system that can be mounted and used quickly. This system was also used by other SM4all partners as a platform for further development and user tests. These tests provided useful information for future research and improvements. These results were then disseminated at many international conferences and trade shows.

Further to this, how has the project benefi ted from an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach?

MM: The project has a truly multidisciplinary spirit. Besides Guger Technologies, it includes Fondazione Santa Lucia (Rome) – a hospital and research centre specialising in disabilities, which worked on BCI systems in cooperation with Guger Technologies. The institute has provided a setting for the consortium to run its experiments. In addition, Dutch collaborators Thuiszorg Het Friese Land, who work with elderly and disabled people, kindly provided requirements, test beds and user validation.

Other consortium members included the University of Groningen (The Netherlands); Technical University Wien (Austria); and the Royal Institute of Technology and the Swedish Defense Research Agency (Sweden). Together with Sapienza University of Rome, the partners worked on the core service-based middleware technologies and automatic service composition approaches. Our industrial partners included Telefonica R&D (Spain) and Elsag Datamat (Italy), which worked on all aspects, bringing the technology to market.

Can you shed light on some of the issues that have arisen over the course of the project?

RB: From a technical perspective the main diffi culty has been the integration of so many different hard- and software technologies under the SM4all software framework (from BCI to raw hardware devices). Organisationally speaking, the challenge has been ensuring each partner’s awareness of the struggle that lies ahead. Continuous motivation here has been key to reaching our targets.

Are there any other aspects of your work you would like to highlight?

RB: SM4all has generated a number of national projects. As an example a project on smart homes (funded by Sapienza University of Rome), and another on BCI applications for domotic environment (Fondazione Santa Lucia) were selected and presented at the Italian Pavillon of the Shangai Expo in 2010. The project ‘Smart Homes’ includes the use of SM4all technology in the development of robots designed to help disabled people carry out daily activity inside their homes.

CG: The SM4all project has illustrated that smart home technology is really important for paralysed people. It is very important that smart homes enter the mass market so that the costs of domotic devices decrease, making these systems cheaper for patients.

SM4ALL DEVICES OFFERING SERVICES (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT): ENGINE FOR DOORS, SMOKE SENSOR, SMART FRIDGE, ENGINE FOR CURTAINS, SMART STEREO

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Plugged inSM4all is a platform seeking to push the boundaries of modern living by synchronising household devices to create a person-centric environment. Having just reached its completion, we examine the important steps made and the challenges it has overcome

BEING ABLE TO interact with your home and coordinate its devices using your brain waves has long been imagined in the realms of science fi ction; now it appears to be on the brink of reality. The SM4all project is an embedded middleware platform for pervasive and immersive environments, developing smart homes for all, but with a special focus on the elderly, disabled and chronically ill.

Led by Dr Roberto Baldoni, this cutting-edge project looks to impact the lives of those with limited or no physical movement through the use of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology. A BCI system measures brain activity in order to control external devices. This is performed by means of electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes mounted on the head and a bio-signal amplifi er that measures the user’s brain waves. The data generated is then analysed by a computer system in real-time so that specifi c thoughts can be translated. For people who are totally or partially paralysed this technology and its application could represent a great step forward in performing simple actions autonomously.

Although the project is now focused on executing complex actions and synchronising household devices automatically using the SM4all system, this technology has a wide market and could be used in the entertainment and amusement industries. While such applications throw up exciting possibilities, SM4all remains primarily focused on its foremost aim of serving those unable to negotiate general home devices.

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES

Using BCI, individuals are able to control the SM4all system mentally. On fi rst impression, this may sound like something from a Hollywood blockbuster, but arriving at this point has required an inordinate amount of hard work and tenacity. Christoph Guger, one of the principal investigators of SM4ALL, is eager to mark out the progress the team has made: “About three years ago we needed a complete day of training data, but currently we require about fi ve minutes of EEG data from every user to calibrate the BCI system before SM4all can be controlled”. EEG, a recording of the electrical activity of the brain, is the means through which the smart-embedded services are able to be dynamically interconnected and reconfi gured, allowing the individual to be immersed in his/her environment. For instance, A PATIENT USING THE BCI

70 INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION

SM4ALL

INTELLIGENCE

SM4ALLSMART HOMES FOR ALL – AN EMBEDDED MIDDLEWARE PLATFORM FOR PERVASIVE AND IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENTS

OBJECTIVES

The project aims at studying and developing

an innovative middleware platform for

inter-working of smart embedded services in

immersive and person-centric environments,

through the use of composability and

declarative techniques, in order to guarantee

overall dynamicity.

PARTNERS

Sapienza University of Rome; Fondazione

Santa Lucia; Elsag Datamat, Italy

Technische Universitaet Wien; Guger

Technologies OEG, Austria

University of Groningen; Thuiszorg Het

Friese Land, The Netherlands

Royal Institute of Technology (KTH);

Swedish Defence Research Agency,

Sweden

Telefonica Investigacion y Desarrollo,

Spain

CONTACT

Professor Roberto Baldoni

Project Coordinator

Sapienza University of Rome

Via Ariosto 25

I-00185 Rome, Italy

T +39 0677274014

E baldoni@dis.uniroma1.it

http://www.sm4all-project.eu

ROBERTO BALDONI conducts research on

distributed systems with a specifi c emphasis

on dependability and security aspects.

He has led several large collaborative

interdisciplinary projects at National

and European level on cyber intelligence.

Currently, Roberto is vice-chair of the

IEEE Technical Committee on Dependable

Computing and Fault Tolerance.

if a person wishes to take a bath, the home’s services will collaborate with the individual’s request – the bath will be fi lled with water that is 37oC, the temperature in the bathroom will be raised and the wardrobe in the bedroom opened in order to provide easy access to the bathrobe.

These embedded systems are specialised computers employed by larger systems to control, for example, cars, home appliances, communication and offi ce machines. The concept of embedded systems is not in itself new. However, in the context of next generation buildings and infrastructures, eHealth, domotics and other domains where invisible embedded systems need to continuously interact with human users and respond to service requests, having users at the centre throws up questions of security and privacy, as well as new challenges relating to the dynamicity, scalability and dependability of current middleware and service technologies.

MEETING THE CHALLENGES

To respond to the unique needs of the user, sensors and services that continuously adapt depending on the user’s habits and specifi c environment are required. By adding, removing or composing services offered by sensors and devices, SM4all aims to improve the dynamicity of its system, allowing it to be customised more readily.

When a system is used by the elderly, disabled or incapacitated, dependability, security and privacy are paramount. Technical Manager, Massimo Mecella, is mindful of the need for discretion, and it is his belief that the design of such a system should incorporate privacy preservation from the outset. This is in contrast to current models, where such mechanisms are added-on at a later stage.

These considerations are crucial to the development and usability of the SM4all system. For persons that

are active, these points are still valid, but are more necessary if the user is infi rm. SM4all aims to direct this platform for inter-working of smart embedded services in immersive and person-centric environments to users with different abilities and needs, eg. the young able-bodied; the aged; and those who are disabled. The general usability, based on the project’s suggestions, has been tested with real users, and the outcomes have indicated that there is still exciting work ahead for the team. With innovative projects like SM4all, where cutting-edge technology is being employed, applications are invariably borne out of much labour-intensive research and testing.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ECONOMY

Today, smart homes are very costly and remain to some extent a toy for the rich, rather than an affordable commodity. The project has succeeded in its goals by developing an open software platform to lower the installation and operational costs of smart homes, ensuring that they become more fi nancially viable in the future. Mecella likens the progress that SM4all aims to make in facilitating affordable mass products

to that of the decreasing price of fl atscreen TVs: the SM4all team forecast that the technological progress and solutions proposed will drive down the cost of smart homes.

Another aspect of SM4all’s technology is the provision of more energy-effi cient living. An awareness of space, temperature, luminosity, the smart composition of services, and adaptation capabilities, are all areas of the project’s research that lend it perfectly to energy-effi cient applications. This concept is being explored through the Greener Buildings project, which started in 2010 and is continuing through to August 2013.

Although SM4all’s lifespan formally came to a close in August 2011, it is far from over in terms of its impact and future endeavours. The platform has exceeded its objectives, and its outcomes are being contractually utilised by ITRI, the largest Taiwanese industrial research institute, who have a wealth of expertise in the production of innovative intelligent devices for homes. As a result of the team’s ingenuity, there is no doubt that the SM4all project, in spite of its name, has made a big contribution in the development of smart home technology.

VIRTUAL SMART

HOUSE, USED

IN DEVELOPING

AND TESTING

THE SYSTEM

THE SM4ALL USER INTERFACE FOR TABLETS

PORTABLE BCI HARDWARE FROM G.TEC

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