Modelling interactions in AAL

J.B. Mocholí(1), P. Sala(1), C. Fernández-Llatas(1), J.C. Naranjo(1)

(1)TSB-ITACA, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, SpainMEDICON 2010, 27th–30th May 2010, Chalkidiki, Greece

Ontology for Modeling Interaction in Ambient Assisted Living Environments

• Introduction.• VAALID project.• User Model.– ICF descriptors.

• Interaction Model.• Example.• Implementation.• Future work.

Table of Contents

2MEDICON 2010, 27th – 30th May 2010, Chalkidiki, Greece

• Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) are environments that:– Are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. – Provide assistive propositions for maintaining and independent lifestyle.

• AAL services and solutions are appearing as a response to the ageing of the population and their wish of living independently as long as possible.

• The population of Europe is ageing and there is also an increasing number of people with impairments and disabilities:– 61.4 million inhabitants of EU27 are expected to be aged 80 and over in

2060, an increase of almost triple compared with 21.8 million in 2008 [1].

Introduction I


• The integration of the elderly and persons with disabilities in our modern information and communication society needs to radically improve the accessibility and usability of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) solutions.

• Accessibility aspects are more and more present in ICT solutions. However, a tool that facilitates validation of accessibility in AAL systems from the first step of the design is missed. Validation has advantages:– Saves big amounts of money– Saves time– Permits the personalization and a better matching of the requirements

and necessities of the end user.

Introduction II


• This presentation describes a set of OWL ontologies developed in the European project VAALID [2].

• VAALID aims at creating an open and descriptive model to define “the users”, “the environments” and their “interactions”, that define AAL services and solutions [3].

• VAALID is developing tools in order to assess that AAL products and services fulfill the accessibility and usability requirements.

VAALID project I


• Ontologies are used to provide a powerful and growing specification of the concepts involved in a user interaction scenario. – User: profile (anthropologic, demographic), social

relationships, activities (all types: sports, hobbies, ...), etc.– Environment: objects, environmental conditions (lighting,

humidity, noise, temperature, etc.), etc.– Services: description of their functionalities, the flow, the

parameters, type of invocation, etc.– Devices: type of device, the type and value of the signal

measured, etc.

VAALID project II


• “Design for All” guidelines for ICT products and services developed by the ETSI [4] defines the attributes that should be considered:– Sensory abilities such as seeing, hearing, touch, taste,

smell and balance.– Physical abilities such as speech, dexterity, manipulation,

mobility, strength and endurance.– Cognitive abilities such as intellect, memory, language and

literacy.• The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and

Health (ICF) [5] covers all these aspects.

User Model


• ICF describes <<the disabilities and functioning as the product of interactions between health conditions and contextual factors each of which has an impact on how disability is experienced by the person>> [6].

• The descriptors used by ICF are divided in four main groups:– Body Functions: Mental functions; Sensory functions and pain; Voice

and speech functions; etc.– Body Structures: Structures of the nervous system; The eye, ear and

related structures; Structures related to movement; etc.– Activities and Participation: Learning and applying knowledge;

Communication; Mobility; etc.– Environmental Factors: Products and Technology; Natural

environment; Attitudes; etc.

User Model,ICF I


• ICF Body Function descriptors covers all the current needs to describe the abilities of the person.– Sensory abilities are Seeing (Visual Field, Visual Acuity and Quality of

Vision), Hearing (Sound and Speech discrimination), Balance and Touch (Temperature, Vibration and Pressure).

– Physical abilities are Endurance, Manipulation (Lifting, Carrying or Putting down objects), Speech (Production of sounds and Production of Speech sounds), Strength, Dexterity (Pulling, Catching, Pushing, …) and Mobility (Voluntary and Involuntary Movements).

– Cognitive abilities are Intellect functions, Attention (Sustaining, Shifting or Sharing), Orientation (Time, Place and Person), Language (Reception and Expression of language) and Memory (Short and Long term).

User Model,ICF II


• In order to provide a solution concerning the description of the interaction, Fourney presented the Common Accessibility Profile (CAP) [10]:– <<A framework for identifying the accessibility issues of individual

users with particular systems configurations, defining and describing the needs and capabilities of systems, devices and users to communicate among them>>.

• CAP has been taken as basis of the standard ISO/IEC 24756:2009 [11], (this standard defines CAP as Common Access Profile).

• CAP has been adapted to the needs of VAALID.

Interaction Model I


Interaction Model II


• The CAP Overall is composed by the union of the CAP of the user (CAPuse), the CAP of the devices (CAPsys and CAPat) and the CAP of the environment (CAPenv): CAPo = CAPuse +

CAPsys + CAPat + CAPenv.• The set of CAPuse models the capabilities of interaction of a

user. These CAPuse are aligned with the description done using the ICF descriptors.

• In the same way CAPsys, CAPat and CAPenv will describe the capabilities of the devices and the environment involved

Interaction Model III


• A CAP is specified by defining Interacting Components (IC)• IC has Component Features (CF) which can express a set of

capabilities related to Input Receptor (IR), Output Transmitter (OT) or the Processing Functions (PF) that transform IR to OT: CAP = ∑IC = IR + OT + PF.

• IC defines a direction (In, Out or Dual); a modality (Visual, Auditory or Tactile) and a set of properties defining a media, a language and an interaction style.

• The definition of the IC and its properties permits to perform matching and checking of constraints automatically by creating an easy set of rules.

Interaction Model IV


• Well-versed in computers, Johann has little difficulty in their use. • Johann wears glasses to correct mild shortsightedness.• Johann is hard of hearing and has trouble hearing error tones, if the

volume is not sufficiently loud. In addition, he is unable to hear in the left ear and only able to hear sounds within a specific range of volume and pitch in the right.

• He is fluent in German. • As a side effect of being hard of hearing, his speech contains some odd

inflection and nasality. • Johann is dominantly left-handed and tends to prefer using a mouse in the

left hand to the point where he will only tolerate using ergonomically right-handed mice in his left hand for short periods.

Example,Modeling Johann I


• User Model, modeling Johann’s ICF– Mild shortsightedness:

Ability Sensory Seeing vision acuity Acuity of near vision with:ICF Qualifier 1 (mild problem)

– Unable to hear in the left ear:Ability sensory hearing sound discrimination and speech discrimination with: ICF Qualifier: 3 (complete problem) ICF impairment location code: 2 (left)

– Hard hearing, troubles hearing error tones. Able to hear sounds with a sufficient volume and pitch in the right.

Ability sensory hearing sound discrimination and speech discrimination ICF Qualifier: 1 (mild problem) ICF impairment location code: 1 (right)

Example,Modeling Johann II


• Interaction Model, modeling Johann’s CAP:

– Defines the following considerations:• Speech: Johann has full speech capabilities, doesn’t

report problems with speech-recognition.• Sight: Johann reports a problem that is corrected with

glasses, then he has full sight capabilities.• Hearing: Johann reports monaural hearing capability

done within a specific range of volume and pitch.• Tactile: Johann has full tactile capabilities

Example,Modeling Johann III


• Interaction Model, modeling Johann’s CAP:– Johann’s Visual Input modality would be:

• Qualifier: MAY.• ModalityType: VISUAL.• MediaTypes: {TextWritten, Picture, VisualModel, Movie, DynamicVisualModel, Gesture}• Language: { deu }

– Johann’s Auditory Input modality would be:• Qualifier: MAY.• ModalityType: AUDITORY.• MediaTypes: {TextSpoken, Sound, Music}• Language: { deu }• And Capabilities:

– Name: Monarual– Instance:0– Values: Right

Example,Modeling Johann IV


• A tool called Authoring Tool (AT) allows the designer to model the user, the service, the environment and the devices, and also reuse them from other projects.

• AT also provide editors to set the CAP for all the elements. Some CAP related to user are automatically set when filling the user’s abilities with ICF descriptors, like the ones used in the example.

• The constraints are checked before going to the simulation. The user’s CAP is checked with the CAPs of the other elements. A report is showed with the results of the checking.

• It is done before simulation because the project can add some elements from previous projects, or change them in this point.

Implementation


• Current status:– AT and simulation tools still under development.– Simple if-then statements have been implemented to set

the user’s CAP.– CAPs are checked also by simple statements computing the

modality and media types and the CAP Qualifier.

• Future work:– Refine the constraint checking performing more tests with

several cases.– Improve the checking process by using rules.

Future work


• The authors wish to thank the European Commission for the project funding and the VAALID consortium for their support.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT


J.B. Mocholí(1), P. Sala(1), C. Fernández-Llatas(1), J.C. Naranjo(1)

(1)TSB-ITACA, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, SpainMEDICON 2010, 27th–30th May 2010, Chalkidiki, Greece

Ontology for Modeling Interaction in Ambient Assisted Living Environments

1. Giannakouris K, (2008) Ageing characterises the demographic perspectives of the European societies. Eurostat, Statistics in focus Issue 72/2008.

2. Consortium VAALID. VAALID Project: Accessibility and Usability Validation Framework for AAL Interaction Design Process. http://www.vaalid-project.org 2008-2010.

3. Naranjo J C, Fernández C, Sala P et al. (2009) A modelling framework for Ambient Assisted Living validation. Universal Access in HCI, Part II, HCII 2009, LNCS 5615:228-237

4. ETSI, EG 202 116 v1.2.1 (2002-09): Human Factors (HF); Guidelines for ICT products and services; “Design for All” at http://www.etsi.org

5. World Health Organization (2001), International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) at http://www.who.int/classiffications/icf/en/.

6. World Health Organization, (2002). Towards a common language for functioning, disability and health: ICF. Training materials, ICF training Beginner's Guide at http://www.who.int/classiffications/icf/en/

7. Richter K, Hellenschmidt M. (2004) Interacting with the Ambience: Multimodal Interaction and Ambient Intelligence, Proc of the W3C Workshop on Multimodal Interaction 2004.

8. Obrenović Ž, Abascal J, Starčević D. (2007). Universal Accessibility as a Multimodal Design Issue, Communications of the ACM Vol. 50 Issue 5:83-88

9. Obrenović Ž; Troncy R, Hardman L (2007). Vocabularies for Description of Accessibility Issues in Multimodal User Interfaces, Proc. of Workshop on Multimodal Output Generation, MOG'07, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, 2007, pp 117-128

10. Fourney D, (2007) Using a common accessibility profile to improve accessibility. Master Thesis submited to the College of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.

11. ISO/IEC 24756:2009, Information technology - Framework for specifying a common access profile (CAP) of needs and capabilities of users, systems, and their environments at http://www.iso.org/

Bibliography


http://www.vaalid-project.org/

http://www.etsi.org/

http://www.who.int/classiffications/icf/en/

http://www.who.int/classiffications/icf/en/

Modelling interactions in AAL

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