A Smart home is an intelligent environment able to perform several tasks, from the simple door-window automation, to the secure-safety functions, to the most advanced telecare services. But if we join the technological point of view with the social, educational and experimental ones, a smart home can become a multipurpose environment. This is the case of the two domotic apartments in the city of Ferrara, recently renewed. One of them is dedicated to a permanent domotics show and a disability help desk (called Centro H, where H stays for handicap), the other serves as a real smart home, where patients from the near San Giorgio Rehabilitation Hospital can spend a period of two weeks, together with a relative, to test the technology, acquire a certain level of independence and autonomy, eventually referring about possible improvements of the smart home system or of the apartment structure (furniture, spaces, lighting and so on). The first smart home is also used from the University of Electronic Engineering as a laboratory for students, to test experimental projects, in collaboration with the INAIL Prosthetic Centre, a very important partner in the domotic research field. The aim of the paper is then to illustrate the structure of the two domotic apartments, realized with two different commercial systems with two different purposes, and the educational project associated with them.
The Centro-H smart homes, a point of convergence between technology and social sciences
MAINARDI, Elena;
2007
Abstract
A Smart home is an intelligent environment able to perform several tasks, from the simple door-window automation, to the secure-safety functions, to the most advanced telecare services. But if we join the technological point of view with the social, educational and experimental ones, a smart home can become a multipurpose environment. This is the case of the two domotic apartments in the city of Ferrara, recently renewed. One of them is dedicated to a permanent domotics show and a disability help desk (called Centro H, where H stays for handicap), the other serves as a real smart home, where patients from the near San Giorgio Rehabilitation Hospital can spend a period of two weeks, together with a relative, to test the technology, acquire a certain level of independence and autonomy, eventually referring about possible improvements of the smart home system or of the apartment structure (furniture, spaces, lighting and so on). The first smart home is also used from the University of Electronic Engineering as a laboratory for students, to test experimental projects, in collaboration with the INAIL Prosthetic Centre, a very important partner in the domotic research field. The aim of the paper is then to illustrate the structure of the two domotic apartments, realized with two different commercial systems with two different purposes, and the educational project associated with them.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
