The Ethics and Assistive Technology Survey

Assistive technologies are intended to improve the lives of people with disabilities by enabling independence and facilitating social connections. Examples of such technologies include powered wheelchairs and speech recognition software.

Professor Dr. Peter Danielson at the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia conducts research about ethics and assistive technology. The purpose of the research is to facilitate well-informed discussion about complex issues related to ethics and scientific and technological developments.

A survey with 14 questions is now open for participation.

Telecoach for Night Walks in Stockholm County

Inhabitants in the County of Stockholm can call a special telephone number, called "Nattknappen" (Night button) if they feel unsafe when walking home at weekend nights. On Fridays and Saturdays between 23:00 - 03.30 everybody in the Stockholm County can call 08-50 44 66 66 and talk to one of 40 trained volunteers, who identifies the position of the caller, where he/she is going and follows the caller via the phone back home. If there should be an incident, the volonteer can call for police assistance. The name Nattknappen refers to the idea to store the phone number as a shortcut in the mobile phone for easy and fast access.

AAL track at ITNG 2010

The 6th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations, ITNG 2010 April 12-14, 2010, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA includes a track about Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) for Elderly People. Following topics are announced:
Case studies / use cases / scenarios / application domains
Requirements of WSN for ambient assisted living for elderly people and/or health care
Business models for wireless sensor network applications
Sensor hardware
Supporting technologies for elderly people
Middleware for wireless sensor network
Reference architectures
Standards (hardware/software/healthcare, etc.)
Concepts and tools for building wireless sensor network applications
Development models
Code generation for wireless sensor network platforms
Model-driven architectures and development
Data fusion and classification as well as context recognition
Tracking and localization of objects and individuals
Remote medical monitoring
Security and privacy issues
Performance and reliability issues
Deployment and maintenance
Energy and efficiency
Time and synchronization
Data acquisition models and routing

Independent Lifestye System for Elderly People

Researchers at the Austrian Institute of Computer Aided Automation are developing a reliable and automated computer vision system to enable an independent lifestyle for the elderly and disabled. The system is based in the area of “smart homes” but uses state-of-the-art 2d and 3d computer vision techniques. The system will be a closed system for the automatic visual event detection and the communication with mobile devices. Main goal is the robust fall detection of elderly people. Fire, smoke and water detection and assistance for medication are introduced in a second step.

AAL Conference Eindhoven, 19-20 November 2009

The SOPRANO consortium consisting of 24 Partners from 7 different countries (Greece, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia and Ireland) is organising a conferens aimed to explore Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) concepts. The conference will discuss AAL application design, user involvement, technologies and market potential.
More info.

Robot Ethics

Australian philosopher Robert Sparrow, Centre for Human Bioethics, believes it is unethical to attempt to substitute robot simulacra for geniune social interaction. He has been working for the last several years on the ethics of robotics, including ethics of military robotics and ethics of health-care robotics. In his paper "In the hands of machines? The future of aged care", Mind Mach, Springer 2006 he and his co-author Linda Sparrow, an independentt Age Care Consultant, emphasis the importance of social and emotional needs of older persons, which robots are incapable of meeting. The use of robots in elderly care would be detrimental to the well-being of the elderly people.
What do you think? Is it unethical to attempt to substitute robot simulacra for genuine social interaction?
Please enter your answer in the inquiry on the left.

Roadmap for AAL Research

The AALIANCE initiative – “The European Ambient Assisted Living Innovation Alliance” - aims to coordinate the European AAL R&D community and to develop a common strategic vision for short-, mid- and long-term R&D approaches in the AAL context. An important step towards this aim is the release of the Ambient Assisted Living Roadmap for research and innovation which the project consortium has now published on its website.

The full document of 120 pages provides an in-depth look into the future of AAL application areas, concepts and technologies until 2025. Download