From Italy Luca Chittaro writes Smartmobs: “Since you sometimes report about topics like smart homes, this interview to Boris de Ruyter (PHILIPS research) could be of interest”

[Thank you Luca for posting this interview about the future of Ambient Assited Living!!]

Can you tell me more about Ambient Assisted Living and your project CareLab?
“About five years ago, we adopted the vision of Ambient Intelligence. Basically, this vision outlines that humans are central in an environment of technology that is addressing human needs. The aspect of embedding technologies into an environment and bringing appealing end user experience to life are so different from a more traditional (stand-alone, product) approach that we needed a simulation of a home environment to prototype and test these Ambient Intelligence concepts. Continuing this approach to user-centered research, we recently built a CareLab. CareLab is a simulation of an apartment for seniors. This apartment is equipped with lots of sensors that are used in our research on assistive solutions. What we see is that as technology is becoming intelligent (by means of the information captured with sensors and on which a system can reason), it can start coaching people in their day to day life“.

How do you think a widespread diffusion of Ambient Intelligence will redefine our notion and perception of what we call “home” ?
“As mentioned previously, in our research we start from the so called context-mapping studies. With those studies we investigate today’s context in order not to disturb the emotional aspects of today’s home. For example, several years ago we conducted a context-mapping study into the meaning of “home”. That highlighted how home is more than a building: it is a collection of emotionally significant events (or rituals) such for example breakfast with the family or bed time stories for the children. If one disturbed these rituals by introducing new technologies, end users would reject such technologies. So it is important to ensure that the “home” of today is not changed by AmI innovations.”