At Home with Us

In this paper, we present ongoing research on a methodology to assist people with moderate disabilities, in their homes, using off-the-shelf smart home technologies, and open-source software. Clearly, such building blocks can cover a smaller set of scenarios than custom-built alternatives, but we believe they are nonetheless capable of improving the life of several people and their caregivers, avoiding or postponing the adoption of more invasive, less affordable solutions. Our methodology includes a body of principles to build assistance solutions out of smart home devices. We have already identified a set of technologies to implement our methodology, and actual assistance actions in real-world scenarios where our methodology is applicable. We have already experimented with the methodology in one scenario.