Assistance from the Ambient Intelligence: Cyber–physical​ system applications in smart buildings for cognitively declined occupants

Caregivers have traditionally provided assistance and care to patients with cognitive decline, but this has resulted in financial and emotional burdens for both caregivers and patients, impacting their quality of life. To address this issue, Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) technologies that incorporate Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can replace or complement caregivers by enabling intelligent learning in smart buildings. This review evaluates the intelligence complements provided by smart buildings enabled with such capabilities to increase the quality of life and autonomy of cognitively declined occupants. Existing contributions primarily focus on learning occupants’ behavior to identify assistive services and solutions, which are delivered through technological interventions or caregivers. However, there are several key research gaps that need to be addressed. The most important is the lack of adequate implementation of technological interventions to fully support the occupants’ autonomy and independence. Other gaps include challenges in usability and acceptability, ethical concerns, systems’ comprehensiveness, and the need for human-in-the-loop. To address these gaps, a conceptual framework is proposed as future research directions for the applications of smart buildings supporting cognitively declined occupants. The framework aims to facilitate the implementation of technological interventions that can enhance occupants’ autonomy and independence, address usability and acceptability challenges, and ensure ethical considerations and system comprehensiveness. This review provides insights into the current state-of-the-art of AAL technologies and highlights research directions for improving the quality of life and autonomy of cognitively declined occupants.