Kannon: Ubiquitous Sensor/Actuator Technologies for Elderly Living and Care: A Multidisciplinary Effort in National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

A team of researchers including computer scientists, electrical and control engineers, architects, industrial designers, human factor engineers, and cognitive scientists in the National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan, along with their overseas collaborators launched the project Kannon, a multi-disciplinary effort to develop Adaptive Assistive Technologies that can be deployed incrementally into existing private/public spaces and collaborate opportunistically to offer monitoring, assisting, communicating and rejuvenating services to healthy elders. The team combined the state-of-art information, communication and robotic know-how with the activity oriented method for product design and the modular functional approach in modern architecture in order to devise a holistic support for successful aging. This paper presents the philosophy, approach and first fruits of this project.