Enabling a Plug-and-play integration of smart environments

In this paper, we describe our research activity on the integration of technologies in the environment of aging people who would benefit from using adapted systems and accessible environment to compensate, even partly, problems of daily activities. The paper focuses on the concept of a smart house in the box, which is an idea of creating a smart house that needs a minimum engineering expertise, that does not require a significant system integration phase, and which reduce the cost of deployment. The paper describes our method that enables an easy integration and management of assistive space. It discusses the method of an automatic self-integration of devices in the house, including mechanisms of describing/identifying devices, mechanisms of sensing/detecting device and the mechanisms of installing devices. In this paper we also present the integration of the system in the Gator Tech Smart House (GTSH), which is a real house in a retirement complex, created specially to fit the needs of ageing people