Abstract
In this chapter, we introduce and describe personal assistive devices for elderlies. These devices aim to allow elderly people to stay more independent at their home and focus on the elderly person as the first user who must experience a benefit from them. At first, we provide a classification of the devices required to support the execution of activities of daily living based on the technical application and domains involved. For each application class, we will then describe the state of the art and systems currently in development as well as their applicability in real life and their limitations. Finally, we will conclude by describing which future developments are required to obtain devices which truly improve user’s quality of life and therefore have potential to be accepted and be successful in the market.
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Further Reading
Bardram, J. E., Mihailidis, A., & Wan, D. (2007). Pervasive computing in healthcare. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all the people involved in the work of the AgeTech group at the department of Micro Technology and Medical Device Technology of the TU Muenchen.
We thank Prof. Tim C. Lueth for his valuable input and discussions about the technical classification, open problems and future outlook, as well as Samuel Reimer, Jakob Neuhaeuser and Joachim F. Kreutzer for their input regarding the state of the art in physical, cognitive and vegetative aids, respectively.
We would also like to thank the KWA Kuratorium Wohnen im Alter gAG, especially Dr. Stefan Arend and Michael Pfitzer for the interesting discussions and for letting us visit their nursing home and observe the caregivers in their daily work.
Last but not least, we are very grateful to the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung for its financial support of our work.
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D’Angelo, L.T., Kreutzer, J.F., Neuhaeuser, J., Reimer, S., Lueth, T.C. (2014). Personal Assistive Devices for Elderlies. In: Holzinger, A., Ziefle, M., Röcker, C. (eds) Pervasive Health. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6413-5_8
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