Compacted and Industrially Customizable Ambient Intelligent Service Units: Typology, Examples and Performance

With fast proceeding demographic change, lack of qualified nursing staff and costs explosion concerning our health and welfare systems, new methods have to be developed to support elderly people in their home environment with ambient integrated and intelligent assistance/service technologies. Service units and related typologies presented in this paper are adding new layers of functionalities to conventional home care environments. To simplify implementation, service units shift the complexity arising with more and more complex high-tech buildings to a compact entity/unit which could be industrially prefabricated/customized and equipped with various assistance technologies in a controlled factory environment. Moreover, service units can be installed within new or existing buildings rapidly and with minimized effort as an additional building sub-module.