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Formally Assured Intelligent Systems for Enhanced Ambient Assisted Living Support
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Embedded Systems. (Formal Modelling and Analysis of Embedded Systems)
2019 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions are aimed to assist the elderly in their independent and safe living. During the last decade, the AAL field has witnessed a significant development due to advancements in Information and Communication Technologies, Ubiquitous Computing and Internet of Things. However, a closer look at the existing AAL solutions shows that these improvements are used mostly to deliver one or a few functions mainly of the same type (e.g. health monitoring functions). There are comparatively fewer initiatives that integrate different kinds of AAL functionalities, such as fall detection, reminders, fire alarms, etc., besides health monitoring, into a common framework, with intelligent decision-making that can thereby offer enhanced reasoning by combining multiple events. 

 

To address this shortage, in this thesis, we propose two different categories of AAL architecture frameworks onto which different functionalities, chosen based on user preferences, can be integrated. One of them follows a centralized approach, using an intelligent Decision Support System (DSS), and the other, follows a truly distributed approach, involving multiple intelligent agents. The centralized architecture is our initial choice, due to its ease of development by combining multiple functionalities with a centralized DSS that can assess the dependency between multiple events in real time. While easy to develop, our centralized solution suffers from the well-known single point of failure, which we remove by adding a redundant DSS. Nevertheless, the scalability, flexibility, multiple user accesses, and potential self-healing capability of the centralized solution are hard to achieve, therefore we also propose a distributed, agent-based architecture as a second solution, to provide the community with two different AAL solutions that can be applied depending on needs and available resources. Both solutions are to be used in safety-critical applications, therefore their design-time assurance, that is, providing a guarantee that they meet functional requirements and deliver the needed quality-of-service, is beneficial. 

 

Our first solution is a generic architecture that follows the design of many commercial AAL solutions with sensors, a data collector, DSS, security and privacy, database (DB) systems, user interfaces (UI), and cloud computing support. We represent this architecture in the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) via a set of component patterns that we propose. The advantage of using patterns is that they are easily re-usable when building specific AAL architectures. Our patterns describe the behavior of the components in the Behavioral Annex of AADL, and the error behavior in AADL's Error Annex. We also show various instantiations of our generic model that can be developed based on user requirements. To formally assure these solutions against functional, timing and reliability requirements, we show how we can employ exhaustive model checking using the state-of-art model checker, UPPAAL, and also statistical model-checking techniques with UPPAAL SMC, an extension of the UPPAAL model checker for stochastic systems, which can be employed in cases when exhaustive verification does not scale. The second proposed architecture is an agent-based architecture for AAL systems, where agents are intelligent entities capable of communicating with each other in order to decide on an action to take. Therefore, the decision support is now distributed among agents and can be used by multiple users distributed across multiple locations. Due to the fact that this solution requires describing agents and their interaction, the existing core AADL does not suffice as an architectural framework. Hence, we propose an extension to the core AADL language - The Agent Annex, with formal semantics as Stochastic Transition Systems, which allows us to specify probabilistic, non-deterministic and real-time AAL system behaviors. In order to formally assure our multi-agent system, we employ the state-of-art probabilistic model checker PRISM, which allows us to perform probabilistic yet exhaustive verification.

 

As a final contribution, we also present a small-scale validation of an architecture of the first category, with end users from three countries (Romania, Poland, Denmark). This work has been carried out with partners from the mentioned countries. 

 

Our work in this thesis paves the way towards the development of user-centered, intelligent ambient assisted living solutions with ensured quality of service.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Västerås: Mälardalen University , 2019.
Series
Mälardalen University Press Licentiate Theses, ISSN 1651-9256 ; 278
National Category
Embedded Systems
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-42922ISBN: 978-91-7485-425-1 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-42922DiVA, id: diva2:1296332
Presentation
2019-04-15, Milos, Mälardalens högskola, Västerås, 13:30 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2019-03-19 Created: 2019-03-14 Last updated: 2019-04-01Bibliographically approved
List of papers
1. Do We Need an Integrated Framework for Ambient Assisted Living?
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Do We Need an Integrated Framework for Ambient Assisted Living?
2016 (English)In: UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING AND AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE, UCAMI 2016, PT II, 2016, p. 52-63Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The significant increase of ageing population calls for solutions that help the elderly to live an independent, healthy and low risk life, but also ensure their social interaction. The improvements in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) have resulted in the development of equipment that supports ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous communication and intelligent user interfaces. The smart home technologies, assisted robotics, sensors for health monitoring and e-health solutions are some examples in this category. Despite such growth in these individualized technologies, there are only few solutions that provide integrated AAL frameworks that interconnect all of these technologies. In this paper, we discuss the necessity to opt for an integrated solution in AAL. To support the study we describe real life scenarios that help us justify the need for integrated solutions over individualized ones. Our analysis points to the clear conclusion that an integrated solution for AAL outperforms the individualized ones.

Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ISSN 0302-9743 ; 10070
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-35030 (URN)10.1007/978-3-319-48799-1_7 (DOI)000389507400007 ()2-s2.0-85009754842 (Scopus ID)978-3-319-48799-1 (ISBN)
Conference
10th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI), San Bartolome de Tirajana, SPAIN, NOV 29-DEC 02, 2016
Available from: 2017-03-16 Created: 2017-03-16 Last updated: 2019-03-14Bibliographically approved
2. A Novel Integrated Architecture for Ambient Assisted Living Systems
Open this publication in new window or tab >>A Novel Integrated Architecture for Ambient Assisted Living Systems
Show others...
2017 (English)In: The 41st IEEE Computer Society International Conference on Computers, Software & Applications COMPSAC 2017, 2017, Vol. 1, p. 465-472, article id 8029645Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The increase in life expectancy and the slumping birth rates across the world result in lengthening the average age of the society. This change in demography has many consequences, the major being the insufficient number of caregivers. Therefore, we are in need of techniques that will assist the elderly in their daily life, while preventing their social isolation. The recent developments in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have facilitated a technological revolution in the field of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). At present, there are many technologies on the market that support the independent life of older adults, requiring less assistance from family and caregivers, yet most of them offer isolated services, such as health monitoring, supervised exercises, reminders etc. There are only very few architectures that support the seamless integration of various functionalities and none of them incorporates user preferences or are formally analyzed for their functionality and quality-of-service attributes which is needed in order to ensure safe mitigations of potential critical scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel architectural solution that seamlessly integrates necessary functions of an AAL system, based on user preferences. To enable a first level of the architecture's analysis, we model our system in Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL), and carry out its simulation for analyzing the end-to-end data-flow latency, resource budgets and system safety.

Keywords
Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Assisted Living, Architecture Analysis and Design Language.
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-35500 (URN)10.1109/COMPSAC.2017.28 (DOI)000424861400061 ()2-s2.0-85031918944 (Scopus ID)
Conference
The 41st IEEE Computer Society International Conference on Computers, Software & Applications COMPSAC 2017, 04 Jul 2017, Turin, Italy
Projects
CAMI - Artificially intelligent ecosystem for self-management and sustainable quality of life in AAL (Ambient Assisted Living)
Available from: 2017-06-09 Created: 2017-06-09 Last updated: 2019-03-14Bibliographically approved
3. A Model-Checking-Based Framework For Analyzing Ambient Assisted Living Solutions
Open this publication in new window or tab >>A Model-Checking-Based Framework For Analyzing Ambient Assisted Living Solutions
2019 (English)Report (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sweden: , 2019
National Category
Embedded Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-42920 (URN)
Note

Since modern ambient assisted living solutions integrate a multitude of assisted-living functionalities within a common design framework, some are safety-critical, it is desirable that these systems are analyzed already at their design stage to detect possible errors. To achieve this, one needs suitable architectures that support the seamless design of the integrated assisted-living functions, as well as capabilities for the formal modeling and analysis of the architecture. In this paper, we attempt to address this need, by proposing a generic integrated ambient assisted living system architecture, consisting of sensors, data-collector, local and cloud processing schemes, and an intelligent decision support system, which can be easily extended to suite specific architecture categories. Our solution is customizable, therefore, we show three instantiations of the generic model, as simple, intermediate and complex configuration, respectively, and show how to analyze the first and third categories by model checking. Our approach starts by specifying the architecture, using an architecture description language, in our case, the Architecture Analysis and Design Language that can also account for the probabilistic behavior of such systems. To enable formal analysis, we describe the semantics of the simple and complex categories as stochastic timed automata. The former we model check exhaustively with UPPAAL, whereas for the latter we employ statistical model checking using UPPAAL SMC, the statistical extension of UPPAAL, for scalability reasons.

Available from: 2019-03-14 Created: 2019-03-14 Last updated: 2019-06-11Bibliographically approved
4. Assuring intelligent ambient assisted living solutions by statistical model checking
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Assuring intelligent ambient assisted living solutions by statistical model checking
2018 (English)In: Lect. Notes Comput. Sci., Springer Verlag , 2018, p. 457-476Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

A modern way of enhancing elderly people’s quality of life is by employing various Ambient Assisted Living solutions that facilitate an independent and safe living for their users. This is achieved by integrating computerized functions such as health and home monitoring, fall detection, reminders, etc. Such systems are safety critical, therefore ensuring at design time that they operate correctly, but also in a timely and robust manner is important. Most of the solutions are not analyzed formally at design time, especially if such Ambient Assisted Living functions are integrated within the same design. To address this concern, we propose a framework that relies on an abstract component-based description of the system’s architecture in the Architecture Analysis and Design Language. To ensure scalability of analysis, we transform the AADL models into a network of stochastic timed automata amenable to statistical analysis of various quality-of-service attributes. The architecture that we analyze is developed as part of the project CAMI, co-financed by the European Commission, and consists of a variety of health and home sensors, a data collector, local and cloud processing, as well as an artificial-intelligence-based decision support system. Our contribution paves the way towards achieving design-time assured integrated Ambient Assisted Living solutions, which in turn could reduce verification effort at later stages.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer Verlag, 2018
Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ISSN 0302-9743 ; 11245 LNCS
Keywords
Artificial intelligence, Computer architecture, Decision support systems, Formal methods, Model checking, Network architecture, Quality control, Quality of service, Safety engineering, Stochastic models, Stochastic systems, Ambient assisted living, Architecture analysis, Cloud processing, Component based, Design languages, European Commission, Home monitoring, Statistical model checking, Assisted living
National Category
Computer and Information Sciences
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-41449 (URN)10.1007/978-3-030-03421-4_29 (DOI)2-s2.0-85056457127 (Scopus ID)9783030034207 (ISBN)
Conference
5 November 2018 through 9 November 2018
Available from: 2018-11-29 Created: 2018-11-29 Last updated: 2019-03-14Bibliographically approved
5. Architecture Modelling and Formal Analysis of Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Architecture Modelling and Formal Analysis of Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems
2019 (English)In: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE, 2019, p. 114-126Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Modern cyber-physical systems usually assume a certain degree of autonomy. Such systems, like Ambient Assisted Living systems aimed at assisting elderly people in their daily life, often need to perform safety-critical functions, for instance, fall detection, health deviation monitoring, communication to caregivers, etc. In many cases, the system users have distributed locations, as well as different needs that need to be serviced intelligently at the same time. These features call for intelligent, adaptive, scalable and fault-tolerant system design solutions, which are well embodied by multi-agent architectures. Analyzing such complex architectures at design phase, to verify if an abstraction of the system satisfies all the critical requirements is beneficial. In this paper, we start from an agent-based architecture for ambient assisted living systems, inspired from the literature, which we model in the popular Architecture Description and Design Language. Since the latter lacks the ability to specify autonomous agent behaviours, which are often intelligent, non-deterministic or probabilistic, we extend the architectural language with a sub-language called Agent Annex, which we formally encode as a Stochastic Transition System. This contribution allows us to specify behaviours of agents involved in agent-based architectures of cyber-physical systems, which we show how to exhaustively verify with the state-of-art model checker PRISM. As a final step, we apply our framework on a distributed ambient assisted living system, whose critical requirements we verify with PRISM.

Keywords
Ambient Assisted Living, Architecture Analsysis And Design Language, Cyber-physical Systems, Model Checking, Multi-Agent Systems, PRISM, Assisted living, Autonomous agents, Biological systems, Computer architecture, Cyber Physical System, Embedded systems, Intelligent agents, Prisms, Safety engineering, Stochastic systems, Systems analysis, Agent based architectures, Architectural languages, Design languages, Intelligent multi agent systems, Multiagent architecture, Safety-critical functions, Stochastic transition systems, Multi agent systems
National Category
Embedded Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-42921 (URN)10.5220/0007730201140126 (DOI)000570412000010 ()2-s2.0-85067426971 (Scopus ID)9789897583759 (ISBN)
Conference
14th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
Note

Conference code: 148432; Export Date: 11 July 2019; Conference Paper

Available from: 2019-03-14 Created: 2019-03-14 Last updated: 2021-09-18Bibliographically approved
6. An end- user perspective on the CAMI Ambient and Assisted Living Project
Open this publication in new window or tab >>An end- user perspective on the CAMI Ambient and Assisted Living Project
Show others...
2018 (English)In: INTED2018 Proceedings, 2018, p. 6776-6785Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

In this paper, we present the outcomes and conclusions obtained by involving seniors from three countries (Denmark, Poland and Romania) in an innovative project funded under the European Ambient Assisted Living (ALL) program. CAMI stands for "Companion with Autonomously Mobile Interface" in "Artificially intelligent ecosystem for self-management and sustainable quality of life in AAL". The CAMI solution enables flexible, scalable and individualised services that support elderly to self-manage their daily life and prolong their involvement in the society (sharing knowledge, continue working, etc). This also allows their informal caregivers (family and friends) to continue working and participating in society while caring for their loved ones. The solution is designed as an innovative architecture that allows for individualized, intelligent self-management which can be tailored to an individual's preferences and needs. A user-centred approach has ranked health monitoring, computer supervised physical exercises and voice based interaction among the top favoured CAMI functionalities. Respondents from three countries (Poland, Romania and Denmark) participated in a multinational survey and a conjoint analysis study.

Keywords
user-centred design, artificial intelligence, fall detection, exergames, vocal interface
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-38958 (URN)10.21125/inted.2018.1596 (DOI)000448704001118 ()978-84-697-9480-7 (ISBN)
Conference
12th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference INTED 2018, 05 Mar 2018, Valencia, Spain
Projects
CAMI - Artificially intelligent ecosystem for self-management and sustainable quality of life in AAL (Ambient Assisted Living)
Available from: 2018-05-15 Created: 2018-05-15 Last updated: 2020-11-16Bibliographically approved

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