EuroCon 2013 • 1-4 July 2013 • Zagreb, Croatia

Short range wireless solutions enabling ambient

assisted living to support people affected by the
Down syndrome
R. Alesii #1 , F. Graziosi #2 , S. Marchesani #3 , C. Rinaldi #4 , M. Santic #5 , F. Tarquini #6
#
Center of Excellence DEWS, University of L’Aquila
L’Aquila, Italy
1
roberto.alesii@univaq.it
2
fabio.graziosi@univaq.it
3
stefano.marchesani@univaq.it
4
claudia.rinaldi@univaq.it
5
marco.santic@univaq.it
6
francesco.tarquini@univaq.it

Abstract—Assistive technologies can provide solutions to peo-
ple with physical disabilities or to weaker individuals that
need particular attention. As a branch of assistive technologies,
ambient care systems are emerging. In this paper we present an
overall domotic architecture that, supported by a Wireless Sensor
Network (WSN) and the use of heterogeneous devices, aims to
provide multiple interfaces between a smart house and its guests.
In particular we describe the results applied in the project Casa+,
a smart house that is addressed to people with Down syndrome;
it offers functionalities for monitoring the environment and
its guests, giving indication signals, audio messages or even
alarms in case of incorrect actions. Through exploitation of
the most recent technologies, keeping in mind the trade off
with costs, we developed the following functionalities: security,
time management, assistance for daily activities, monitoring and
remote control, tracking.
Index Terms—Ambient Assisted Living, Wireless Sensor Net-
works, Multimedia Communication, Indoor Localization, Track-
ing Outdoor
I. I NTRODUCTION
In the last decade there has been an increasing interest in
how technology can help disability, which has been demon-
strated in the behalf of the Sixth Framework Program, FP6 [1].
Within this program a lot of problems concerning disability
have been faced, e.g.: work seeking and integration into the
labour market (Opti-Work, [2] LivingAll [3]), disparity in
provision of access to public transport in Europe (Euro-Access
[4], PTaccess [5]), issues related to architectural barriers
(ReasonableAccess [6]), care, social inclusion and quality of
life for people with disabilities (DIS-QOL [7]), etc.
An interesting branch of this research is related to the
aspects of Ambient Assisted Living which is however mainly
focused on physical disability, [8] and Reports therein.
For instance [9] proposes the use of digital cameras for fall
detection of elderly or disable people and consequent alarm
generation through an SMS. In [10] the authors propose the
integration of visual systems with low level sensors in order
to obtain more precise results or to increase the reliability
of the system. The overall evaluation of the system is not
yet concluded so there is not an order for the computational
complexity.
The privacy aspect is becoming a fundamental point to be
taken into account while proposing domotic solutions. Due to
problems related to privacy aspects, the authors of [11] propose
a video surveillance system where faces are obscured. The
main drawback is that anyway a person could be recognized
though other characteristics such as his eventual disability, his
clothes or walking. The same authors have proposed in [12]
a method to gather dangerous situations from the posture of
humans in an indoor environment.
The most of the problems faced in literature mainly concern
with safety aspects for physically disabled people, that do not
need to be followed from the educational point of view.
On the other hand, if mental disability is considered, it has to
be noticed that, to be helpful, the first aim of an idea has to be
tied to the need of personal awareness and social rehabilitation
of these persons. In particular the Down syndrome is one
of the most diffuse chromosomal anomalies causing mental
disabilities. It has been proved that individual affected by the
Down syndrome can make progresses if properly educated and
continuously stimulated. We particularly refer to these persons
to help them to improve their mental and physical growth, in
order to integrate and have an active participation in the social
context, [13], [14].
Basing on data collected in [15] individuals with Down
syndrome can easly face daily activities such as ”eating” and
”drinking”, respectively the 84.4% and the 78.3%, followed
by the capacity of ”undressing” (the 65.3%) and ”using toilet
facilities” (the 60.2%). Less individuals can wear and take
care of their personal hygiene (respectively the 51.4% and the
40%). The latter activity is the one causing major problems to
interviewees. Also the use of public transportation is enjoyed
by only the 14.4%, even if there is a percentage of them
admitting a low or medium difficulty (the 18.2%), while
the 50.3% state to not be able at all. Domestic activities
are achieved without difficulties by the 18.8%, ”cooking” a

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simple dish is an easy action for the 10.2% and is completely
impossible for the 45.5% of the interviewees.
Furthermore while teachers and scholastic operators are the
most important persons for individuals with Down syndrome
in school age, parents association become the only reference
points for people aged between 20 and 30, [15]. Moreover,
when these persons become adults, parents and relatives start
to feel in a stronger way the problem of the ”after us” using
an overprotective behaviour. It is thus important to reduce the
dependency from relatives and to make these persons facing
and solving the daily problems, in order to guarantee a future
to their own lives and been recognized as adults, [16].
The project we developed has also been pushed by the
critical social environment of the town of L’Aquila, Italy,
that, particularly after the destructive earthquake of 2009, is
missing in infrastructures for disables and their families, both
in terms of socio-educational and physiologic aspects. Indeed
the town of L’Aquila is still facing a complex reordering of
its spaces and public structures, thus causing difficulties in
displacements and absence of reference meeting points. This
scenario is destabilizing particularly for people belonging to
the weakest section of the population to which people affected
by the Down syndrome belong.
In this framework, technology appears to be again an
important aid for educational processes and individuals skills
improvements. In particular we focused on the study of
technological solutions to support people affected by the Down
syndrome to a proper use of resources for daily life. For
this reason the project is called Casa+ (where Casa means
home) referring to a smart apartment, where disables have the
opportunity of spending a few days each month and interacting
with their friends while learning from the domotic facilities of
the flat which gradually reduce the intervention of educators.
Some technological aids introduced in the apartment are
represented in figure 1.
It is worth noting that technology can not be, in any case,
a sufficient solution in the context described. It instead repre-
sents an aid to the proper educative process, by strengthening
and continuously providing the educative action itself.
The structure of the paper is as follows: in Section 2 we
first analyse problems and needs related to our particular kind
of stakeholders, then, in the second subsection, requirements
and functionalities to solve problems are presented. In Section
3 we describe the main system architecture, as the result of
mapping requirements from Section 2 to technological systems
and devices. Finally conclusions and future works are drawn
in Section 4.
II. C ASA + OVERVIEW
A. Casa+ facilities
In this section we briefly present a list of problems and
needs faced in the project.
Domestic safety: The apartment is equipped with specific
units in charge of verifying the presence of people inside each
room. This system has a double aim: control and authentica-
tion. In particular, concerning this latter aspect, it is important
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Fig. 1. Casa+ technological aids.
to hide the devices in charge of providing authentication, for
instance inside a watch), which is able to communicate in a
wireless fashion to another device collecting all data.
Time management: Time management is a critical aspect
for people affected by the Down syndrome because it often
happens that they take too much time to carry on daily actions.
In order to efficiently organize and schedule these actions
we introduced duration’s indicators helping Casa+ guests to
become aware of the passing time. These indicators can be
of various types: tactile, auditive, visual or a combination of
them. The basic idea is to progressively remove these devices
while guests improve their sense of the flow of time.
Daily actions assistance: In order to increase guests au-
tonomy, technological helps have been introduced to help in
daily actions such as: preparing food, taking care of the house,
doing the groceries etc. In particular data and suggestions are
sent to the guests through the use of audio/video aids always
with the primary aim of progressively reducing their presence.
Remote monitoring and control: The process of increasing
awareness on potentialities and capabilities is a procedure that
has to involve also the families of directly interested persons.
With this objective in mind and in order to provide for personal
safety, we equipped the apartment with remote monitoring and
control devices. This way it is possible to remotely access a
part of Casa+ data and educators can eventually use previously
described devices to send messages to guests and parents can
convince themselves of potentialities and capabilities of their
sons.
Communication infrastructure from and to the outside:
We provided for a communication infrastructure in order to
guarantee previously described monitoring and control func-
tionalities as well as to send messages to the guests. Various
communication protocols and an alternative power supply are
assumed to avoid absence of service.
Tracking: The geographic position survey is an essential
element to guarantee mobility support to a person affected
by the Down syndrome. We exploited the use of a small
and simple device allowing the tracking of position data.
This allows the educators to supervise these data depending
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on the level of autonomy of each person as well as his/her
improvements due to the increasing experience.
B. Casa+ technology
We faced previously presented problems by committing
a technological apartment with the aim of developing some
basic functionalities, upon which build services an application,
intended for the guests, their relatives and the educators. It is
worth noting that these latter are also important outside Casa+
since they allow to develop a case study for setting up and
evaluating the educational method.
As first requirement we analysed the possibility of providing
a robust indoor localization service; this service partially
fulfils the requirement of security, since, without excessively
invading the privacy of the guests, it can still allow a control
on the occupation of the spaces, on the interaction between
users and the system, and between the users themselves. It
can also bring benefits to the goal of time management,
as it is possible to control excessive stops and trigger an
alarm at the precise point of the fault. Indoor localization is
a well known topic in literature and a countless variety of
approaches and techniques exists; a classification taxonomy
can be based on different sensor types, signal metric and its
processing, estimation method and estimation end, as in [17].
Many of these systems can be limited to line-of sight (LOS)
scenarios. Typical indoor environments are often obstructed
with many non-line-of sight (NLOS) conditions and thus the
problem of getting a reliable position information becomes
challenging. The following criteria have been assumed for the
whole project: devices in the system should be embedded in
the surroundings and they should not be intrusive, even if
wearable. We focused on localization techniques using RF
sensor type, since the benefits brought by a WSN become
evident in other requirements’ satisfaction.
After a deep market analysis, we found that the most
suitable device for our purposes was a wearable TI Chronos
watch [18], that is equipped with a built-in radio transceiver, a
microprocessor and a tri-axial accelerometer. The watch rep-
resents a proper trade-off between technological requirements
and Casa+ guests acceptance since it is a common and daily
device that is also useful from the educational point of view on
time passing. By the use of the watch as a mobile node within
the scope of a WSN, we aimed to obtain location information
about Casa+ guests. We introduced also passive infra-red (PIR)
sensors in order to point out the presence of foreign persons
or non-collaborative guests inside the rooms.
A WSN comes as a natural solution for environmental
parameters such as temperature and humidity, but also for
interfacing with sensors to control the use of the water in
rooms like kitchen or toilet. For security purposes WSN nodes
can also be connected to gas sensors. All data collected from
localization service or monitoring service can feed a statistical
database to keep track of the evolution of an educational path
or can be used real time to signal anomalies.
The main channel for signalization and human communica-
tion toward guests is a service to broadcast preloaded audio
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Fig. 2. Requirements and systems mapping.
messages; in this way it is possible to record messages with
familiar voices and use them for specific purposes, guests
or locations, letting the system play them when a particular
situation occurs. When the use of systems is not correct, basing
on the presence of people and/or the time spent, for instance,
inside the toilet, a proper audio message is played concerning
the incorrect situation. The audio system is also exploited to
help users for the proper management of the flow of time.
Indeed it provides for:
• a timed wake-up message, including a song the users have
chosen by their own;
• a timed message diffused when it is time to go for
shopping;
• a timed message for preparing the lunch, the dinner and
washing the dishes;
• timed messages directed to individual persons which are
in charge of doing something in particular (e.g. some
guests of Casa+ have a job and so they have to respect a
specific schedule).
The presence of these functionalities inside the apartment,
imply the need of exploiting a gateway for indoor services that
is responsible of offering an interface also outside the system;
in particular let’s think about the remote monitoring of activ-
ities or environmental parameters. Such gateway can act as
a bridge between localization service, monitoring service and
messaging service, being the access point to the outer world,
for example to the internet, through the use of a DSL fixed
line connection or a mobile connection (GPRS/UMTS/HSPA).
Another useful indoor functionality that has been developed
is a simplified web server; it can host some web applications
accessible through two personal computers with multi-touch
capabilities. The power of the web application relies in the
possibility for some of them to be available also outside Casa+
and possibly at user’s home. The developed applications are:
1) Store cupboard. It is a representation of the store
cupboard whose content is continuously updated. After
shopping, each element has to be organized in a specific
shelf, pointed out by the application. In this way the
guests are facilitated in organizing the store cupboard,
finding the ingredients to cook, understanding what is
missing to fill out the shopping list.
2) Shopping list. With this application, guests can build up
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a shopping list in a very easy way just tapping on a set of

products on the screen. The produced list can be directly
sent to a printer. Each product has a text description and
an image, in this way also people that are not able to
read can use this application.
3) Money index book. The aim is to increase guests’
knowledge of coins and money. The application presents
a set of images of coins and euro bills, tapping on an
item, a list of products, purchasable with that amount of
money, is presented.
4) Cookbook. This application is a simplified version of
an interactive cookbook. Through this applications the
guests are supported in the choice of proper meals basing
on available ingredients, or in choice of ingredients
basing on their wishes (that have eventually to be added
to the shopping list) as well as in the steps to be followed Fig. 3. System architecture.
to prepare their meals.
Moreover we introduced an outdoor localization system
through the use of GPS in smartphones in order to maintain
the individual’s safety also outside the apartment area, as well
as helping the user to make the proper actions (choosing a
direction, using the proper bus etc.) in outdoor activities. Con-
cerning outdoor facilities, the guests of Casa+ are encouraged
to autonomously go out from the house and enjoy a walk in the
main meeting points of the town. Their behaviour outside is
supervised by an application whose parameters are established
by the educators depending on the level of autonomy of each
person as well as his/her improvements due to the increasing
experience. The parameters to be set up by the educators are:
• safety zone, where the person can move without gener-
ating any remote warning;
• safety paths: ordinary and safe paths (e.g. from house
to work, or to the supermarket) each one with its own
travelling time. If the user gets out of path or takes too
much time to reach the destination a warning will be Fig. 4. Home automation architecture.
generated and sent both to the user and the educator.
Different alarms can be triggered if position is lost (weak
GPS signal) or if the phone, or the user, does not respond
to solicitation messages.
machines etc.) and the heating system. There are 5 Eva board
A scheme representing main requirements and related sys-
in the apartment each one connected to a subset of controlled
tems or devices to solve them is shown in figure 2.
items. All Eva boards are connected together through a bus
In the next section we show a deeper view of Casa+ system
that ends up to a Vesta Board. Vesta is the webserver of the
architecture.
automation system and allows controlling everything through
III. S YSTEM ARCHITECTURE an intuitive and easy web interface. It also coordinates all
In the process of mapping systems and devices to an Eva boars allowing them to exchange messages in a custom
effective technology, in order to satisfy requirements and solve protocol. Eva is also capable of managing events, for example
problems of previous section, we defined the architecture as if someone leave a room and it appears to be empty, Vesta
shown in figure 3. will turn off the lights, it can also preform some action
at given time during the day such as switching on outside
Home Automation System lights at the sunset. Vesta is connected to Gateway2 and we
The home automation is realized by using the UNA System developed some software that allows web application and
by Master divisione Elettrica [19]. The overall architecture is WSN to communicate with the automation system without
presented in figure 4. using the previously mentioned custom protocol, for example
The Eva board is the core of the system, it manages all the CooKBookApp will make a kitchen light blink when a
the lighting system, controlled loads (such as ovens, washing cooking time ends.

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Fig. 5. A sketch of smart lamp
Wireless Sensor Network
Most of the previously presented functionalities and services
can be easily implemented through the use of a WSN. As
mentioned in previous section, a critical point was the choice
of a node or device that could be wearable, but also reasonable
as trade-off between requirements, costs and potentialities; we
found a good solution in Texas Instruments SoC CC430, which
combines an MSP 430 micro-controller and an integrated
CC1101 wireless transceiver [20], which can operate in the
European ISM band of 868MHz. The MSP430 is a 16-bit
RISC mixed-signal processor for ultra low power applications.
Our network is made up of a multitude of devices or nodes
and it is possible to make different classifications based on the
role they play in the network or on the services they support.
In the following subsections, for sake of simplicity, we group
them in static and nomadic nodes basing on mobility. It is
important to underline that this distinction does not represent
any limitation for different network configurations.
Static nodes: this group includes all nodes that are at a
fixed position and masked within the environment and its
furniture. The SoC CC430 is available on the evaluation boards
CC430F6137 [21], that have been used for instance as anchor
node in the first prototype of the localization system inside the
apartment; in particular we integrated different COTS boards
and devices, hiding all the hardware in a ceiling lamp (a
sketch in figure 5). Our smart lamp comprises a CC430F6137
board, an audio dedicated board with SD memory card for
storing and playing pre-recorded messages, an audio front-
end/amplifier with stereo loudspeakers, a temperature sensor,
a PIR sensor and a battery backup power supply. The CC430
in the smart lamp is responsible of controlling power-on and
power-off of other hardware, as of sending proper commands
to the audio board for playing messages, loudness regulation
and eventually new messages’ uploading. Other fixed nodes
are those connected to the hydraulic system for monitoring
water usage, or the one interfaced with carbon monoxide (CO)
and methane (CH4 ) sensor gas for signalling gas leak in
the kitchen, a cooker forgotten open or a malfunction in the
heating system.
A special static node is the sink node. This is the node
of the network allowing the connection toward the gateway.
We adopted a light communication protocol for WSN, slightly
modifying the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol, [22], where the trans-
mission band is 868.0 - 868.6 MHz and the data rate is 100
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Kbps, it should be stressed that it is necessary to send very
small/light data packets, for this reason the network is safe
enough from congestion. The sink node acts as the coordinator
for the network. Indeed it is in charge of emitting beacons
while device nodes use the emitted beacons to synchronize
within the network. The beacon message contains data related
to the frame duration, allowing device nodes, especially no-
madic nodes, to switch off the radio and switch it on only when
a new beacon is expected. This causes a reduction of the node
duty cycle in order to efficiently manage node energy supply.
Moreover the periodic emission of beacon messages allows
to properly implement communication mechanisms between
coordinator and device nodes, both static or nomadic. The sink
node receives from the other network nodes data concerning
environmental monitoring or localization service information.
On the other side, it sends commands and messages or data
packets, for instance related to a new audio file. We want to
remind that different messages can be managed on different
smart lamps.
Nomadic nodes: they are in charge of monitoring the user
and should be wearable; the SoC CC430 is also available
in ez430-chronos kit [18], in which a CC430 is completely
hidden inside a watch; moreover the system comprises:
• a triaxial accelerometer (VTI CMA3000 Series),
• a temperature sensor (VTI SCP1000 Series),
• a ambient pressure sensor,
• a battery voltage sensor,
• legacy watch functionalities (time and date).
Watches are used for monitoring the activity of the users
and the messages sent to the network encapsulate data from
accelerometers and temperature sensors. It is worth noting that
these messages are used to feed the localization algorithm
as well; indeed every static node, that plays the role of an
anchor node for localization service, records the Received
Signal Strength (RSS) level associated to each message from
each watch and passes it to the sink node. These RSS values
are used to estimate the location of the user wearing the watch,
at room level.
It has to be noticed that localization is mainly used to under-
line too long permanence times in a room. This implies that
a strict precision is not necessary, while stability, reliability
and low complexity are all properties required for the correct
functioning of the system. This is perfectly achieved by the
proposed algorithm.
Concerning battery life, as discussed in section IV, each
residential experience lasts for three days at most. This is
absolutely fine with the used device whose battery needs to
be recharged after four days of continuous device functioning.
Nomadic nodes are the only devices using batteries, together
with water devices whose battery could last for months. The
other devices constituting the home automation system and
the wireless network (static nodes), and the gateways are
connected to the main power.
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Gateways
In our architecture gateway’s functional requirements are
split on two different hardware devices, according to service
level. The gateway GW1 is responsible for the interaction with
WSN at a lower level; the gateway GW2, instead, behaves as
an access point to internet for all the higher level services and
applications offered. It should be noted that all the lower level
system, i.e. the whole WSN and the GW1, is independent from
the home main power supply, since it is battery backuped and
can run in case of emergency, when for instance a black-out
occurs.
GW1: this device is directly connected to the sink node
of the WSN and it has to guarantee the following functional
requirements:
• interaction with nodes belonging to the WSN and mem-
orization supports;
• execution of complex computations (e.g the ones required
by the localization algorithm);
• forward of commands and messages for the audio players;
• notifying the verification of certain events (e.g. opening
of the shower water, temperature over some threshold,
etc.).
It has to be noted that, due to the heterogeneity of the
functional requirements and the position in our architecture,
the gateway is given by a General Purpose Processor (GPP)
with various peripherals to interface with different devices, i.e.
lower level interfaces, such as UART and I2C for communica-
tion with sink node and sensors, and higher level such as USB
and Ethernet, for the storage or LAN connection. We used the
FOX Board G20 which is equipped with a GNU/Linux OS
and a 400MHz Atmel ARM9 micro-processor, [23]. On this
hardware there are several running application for receiving
and processing data, interacting with a SQLite Database [24],
and offering services over a TCP/IP interface by the use of
SOAP [25].
GW2: this device is responsible for offering services at
a higher level for direct human interaction. It hosts various
application among which:
• the one for the interaction with home automation system;
• a back-end application for the educators for setting up
system parameters or managing audio messages;
• a simplified web server for web applications mentioned
in Subsection II-B;
• a graphical interface for localization service;
• an interface for data access.
It mainly uses and exposes services from GW1 and from
home automation system, representing data and exposing func-
tionalities in a user friendly mode, either inside and outside
Casa+. GW2 is connected to the LAN and its applications are
accessible through two personal computers with multitouch
capabilities.
IV. R ESULTS
The overall technological system has been set up in an
apartment located in L’Aquila. This is used by an association
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for people affected by the Down syndrome in order to allow
them to make autonomous residential experiences.
In particular the guests are all adults and they join the
experience in small groups of four people. The first attempts
have been carried on during weekends under the supervision
of two educators that are in charge of allowing the guests to
act as autonomously as possible.
Although the project is just at the beginning, the tests
results, so far, are very positive for everyone. Indeed the educa-
tors expressed their satisfaction in seeing the guests becoming
very friendly with technological facilities and guests, on
their side, are very enthusiastic. Concerning the technological
aspects improvements and variations are introduced every time
this is required by educators basing on guests responses.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper we presented the first implementation of a
project called Casa+. This is addressed to people affected by
the Down syndrome with the aim of helping them to increase
awareness of their potentialities and independence. We thus
equipped an apartment for autonomous residential experience
with technological facilities providing for security systems,
time management, assistance for daily activities, monitoring
and remote control, tracking outdoor.
It has to be stressed that technology can not be useful if
a proper education path is not followed together with the
introduction of technological aids. Moreover it is important for
the users to positively perceive the innovative supply which is
the first step to be reached in order to increase confidence in
their potentialities as well as maintaining individuals’ freedom.
The project is not yet concluded and although we achieved
good results basing on educators experience, we think that
Casa+ will be successful only when its users will be able to
reduce the use of technological aids due to their increased
awareness and independence. Now we are moving the focus
from the web to the mobile world redesigning applications for
smartphones and tablets in order to take advantages from all
the capabilities of those devices, with the aim of providing
each user with a personal and customized smartdevice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is partially supported by Vodafone Foundation.
We would like to remark the irreplaceable help and sustain
we gathered by educators and responsible persons of AIPD
(Italian Association for People affected by the Down syn-
drome) of L’Aquila. The association represented the funda-
mental interface to understand the need of people affected by
the Down syndrome, to guide the technological choices and
to adapt to continuously arising needs.
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