Ambient Assisted Living

Written for students, practitioners and users of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), this comprehensive reference covers methods, concepts, systems, devices, and services that provide unobtrusive support for the daily needs of an assisted person. The reference also provides extensive coverage of applications, software, and information management for AAL, as well as coverage of the latest hardware and software for ergonomic design pertaining to AAL. A key concept covered within the reference is ambient intelligence, which refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. References are provided at the end of each chapter for additional study.

Nuno M. Garcia is a Professor at the School of Communication, Arts and Information Technologies of the Lusophone University of Humanities and Technologies in Lisbon, Portugal. He is also an Invited Professor at the University of Beira Interior in Covilha, Portugal. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Beira Interior. He is currently Head of Research of PLUX Biosensor Engineering Lda, and researcher in the Research Centre for Communication, Arts and New Technologies, and in the Institute of Telecommunications.

Joel Jose P. C. Rodrigues is a Professor at the Department of Informatics of the University of Beira Interior and researcher at the Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Portugal. He received a PhD degree in Informatics Engineering, an MSc degree from the University of Beira Interior and a B.S. degree (licentiate) in Informatics Engineering from University of Coimbra in Portugal. His main research interests include eHealth, sensor networks, vehicular delay-tolerant networks, high-speed networks, and mobile and ubiquitous computing.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dirk Christian Elias is currently the president of the executive board of Fraunhofer Portugal (FhP) and the director of the Fraunhofer research center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions' (FhP-AICOS) in Porto.