Technology Assessment and Research Plan
Date: June 18, 2020
Category: Uncategorized
AAL Programme
Project – SAfety of elderly people and Vicinity Ensuring – “SAVE”
Deliverable: D.1.1 Technology Assessment and Research Plan
Version: 1.0
WP1 Leader: Labidee
Table of contents
- Internet of Things (IoT) general framework and criteria overview (aligning with AAL program objectives)
- Definition of technology
- The context of e-Health sensors (subassembly) component
- The context of well-being component
- Microsoft Azure
- 5.1 App service
- 5.2. Web apps
- 5.3. Cloud Services
- 5.4. Virtual machines
- 5.5. Azure and Internet of Things
- 5.6. Azure IoT Hub
- IBM Cloud
- 6.1. Apps
- 6.2. Services
- 6.3. Infrastructure
- 6.4. IBM Cloud Cloud Foundry architecture
- 6.5. IBM Cloud Cloud Foundry workflow
- 6.6. Cloud Integration API
- 6.7. Characteristics
1. Internet of Things (IoT) general framework and criteria overview (aligning with AAL program objectives)
AAL Projects should have a Potential Impact on Market Development, thus one of the main targets of AAL Programme is to contribute by means of open interfaces and interoperability to the creation of a European market.1 Also, AAL considers several requirements as: adaptability, open interfaces, interoperability and scalability.
Open Source Hardware (OSHD)2 fits the requirements listed above and involves advantages as:
- readily-available components;
- standard processes;
- open infrastructure;
- unrestricted content;
- open source design.
OSHD is based on development boards equipped with modular sensors in order to interact with the environment. The best-known manufactures of OSHD existent of the market are Arduino, Raspberry PI, Microchip, National Instruments, Intel, Olimex etc. (Examples of OSHD boards can be seen in Figure 1).
Figure 1- Examples of OSHD boards (ESP 32, Microchip, NodMCU, OLIMEX PoE, National Instruments USB-6003, Intel Galileo)
In order to achieve a comparative analysis of the OSHD boards existent on the market, in the Table below are presented several specifications of Arduino Uno, NodeMCU, ESP32, Raspberry Pi 4B, Olimex PoE.
Table 1 – Comparisons of OSHD boards
2. Definition of technology
| Definition of a technology | |
|---|---|
| Title | 1. Stress assessment Technologies 2. Actigraphy based Technologies 3. e-Health sensors Technologies 4. Communication Technologies |
| Description | 1. Stress assessment Technologies are based on wearable devices measuring blood pressure and galvanic skin response (GSR), but also temperature, and cortisol in order to evaluate specific changes and detect stress level and phase (excitement, stress and recovery). Stress assessment Technologies give a way to find a balance between work and free time in order to enhance the well-being state of the person. 2. Actigraphy based Technologies are based on wearable devices monitoring human rest/activity cycles. Usually, the trackers are packed as a watch that should be worn continuously in order to record data that can be analyzed offline or in real time. Also, the trackers use sensors for temperature, ambient light sound levels, skin resistance or parkinsonian tremor. 3. e-Health sensors Technologies provide information on disease prevention, early-detection of symptoms and physiological and psychometric monitoring at home. The elder’s condition, based on physiologic and/or psychometric parameters. The e-Health devices can monitor heart rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and other parameters of interest in order to keep track of elder’s health and the elder’s physical condition based on e-Health parameters. 4. Communication Technologies are based mostly on Internet of Things (IoT), the main concept in e-Health systems, which combines wearable sensors, communication systems, and mobile user interfaces. e-Health systems are based on Cloud infrastructure, offering to both elders and caregivers the possibility to track the medical history of the elder. |
| Target group (end users / institutions, elder people / caregivers / doctors, etc) | 1. Elder people, Caregivers; 2. Elder people, Caregivers; 3. Elder people, Caregivers; 4. Institutions, Caregivers, Social and medical insurance services, Companies for elderly people care, Medical centers and general practitioner. |
| Scenario of use | 1. The elder wears the stress assessment device that analyses the evolution of his stress level. The elder can be advised to stop working, relax and/or breathe in order to diminish stress level and thus, to enhance its well-being state 2. The elder wears the actigraphy sensor that analyses the elder’s rest/activity cycles. Using the embedded sensors, the tracker notifies the subject that he is inactive in the last hour and he should walk or do some physical exercises. The device also tracks the number of steps and estimates the calories burned during the day. 3. The elder tests periodically its e-Health parameters. The elder will be pre-trained for proper use of each e-Health device, by a caregiver and/or a volunteer. After the tests are done, the data is stored in the cloud, and both elder and caregiver will be able to track anytime the e-Health history. 4. The devices used for elder monitoring are connected and communicating with a cloud service. The elder, or the caregiver can access the data to observe the elder history and activity. |
| Involved devices | 1. Smart watches, Smart Bracelets, Smart Rings 2. Smart watches, Smart Bracelets, Smart Rings 3. e-Health sensors 4. IoT devices |
| Methods for assessment | The technologies in each category available on the market will be assessed from different points of view, considering the project requirements, user requirements, ease of use, compatibility and price |
3. The context of e-Health sensors (subassembly) component
Commercial off the shelf (COTS*) devices identification and comparative analysis
Table 2 – Comparisons of COTS devices
| No | Company Name | Product Name | Heartrate | Blood Pressure | SpO₂ | Body Position | Body Temp. | Galvanic Skin Response | Air flow | EKG | Snore | Spirometer | Accelerometer | GPS | Android App | Photo | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | cooking Hacks | e-Health v2 | Y | – | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | – | – | – | – | – | – | Link | |
| 2. | Sleepon | Go2Sleep | Y | – | Y | – | – | – | Y | – | – | – | Y | – | Y | Link | |
| 3. | cooking Hacks | My Signals Hardware | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | – | Link | |||
| 4. | cooking Hacks | My Signals Software | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | – | Link | |||
| 5. | Withings | Watch + BPM care | – | Y | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | Link | |||
| 6. | Masimo | Ras97 | Y | Y | Y | – | Y | – | – | Y | – | – | – | Link | |||
| 7. | Comarch | e-Care Band | Y | – | – | Y | – | – | – | – | Y | – | Y | Link | |||
| 8. | Comarch | Cardio-Vest System | Y | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | Link |
4. The context of well-being component
Well-being interconnects the dimensions of physical, mental, and social well-being as extend beyond the traditional definition of health and being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.
Well-being is determined by choices and activities aimed at achieving physical vitality, mental alacrity, social satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, and personal fulfilment. Nevertheless, well-being could also be a condition of a group, thus a high level of well-being means that in some sense the group’s condition is positive.
The Technology Club should help and answer our main topic about elderly well-being, using the benefits of physical and mental activities, improving their ability to adapt to the environment and to improve their social relations.
In our opinion, the Technology Club – Well-being component has four main aspects:
- Activities aspect, the elders could perform with/without the caregivers/volunteer’s moderate physical exercise, mental and social activities.
- Environment aspect, the end-users could spend quality time together in a dedicated physical or virtual location;
- Sensors aspect, the end-user can be monitored, at the Club, through video, environmental and wearable sensors; for example, after social activities, the user’s well-being (mental aspect) can be measured with a stress sensor;
- Integration aspect
Figure 2 – Aspects of Technology Club – Well-being component
Technology Club development shall imply an integration of existing fitness devices COTS-Commercial Off The Shelf, as those presented in the table above, and implementation of relevant existing methodologies for improving/maintaining well-being of the end-users.
Commercial off the shelf COTS devices identification and comparative analysis
For implementing well-being component, in the Table below we presented a list of Commercial off the shelf (COTS) devices which will allow the developer to select the most suitable devices by a comparative analysis planned for the future phase.
Table 3 – Comparisons of COTS devices for well-being component
| No | Product name | Product Type | Producer | Description | Link | Image |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | ActiGraph HT9X Link | actigraphy watch | ActiGraph Corp | Includes a gyroscope, magnetometer, and secondary accelerometer to deliver valuable information about movement, rotation, and body position in sleep and day activity monitoring. | Link | Image |
| 2. | WellShell | fitness device | TaoWellnes | 50 isometric exercises can be performed, for different body parts, with WellShell; the unit works with an app on the user’s Android or iOS Bluetooth | Link | Link |
| 3. | Pip- Personal Stress Sensor & Mental Fitness Trainer | Stress Sensor & Mental Trainer | The Pip | Measures Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) in order to evaluate the changes in sweat gland activity that are reflective of the intensity of our emotional state, otherwise known as emotional arousal. | Link | Link |
| 4. | Jitterbug Smart2 | Flip phone for seniors | Greatcall | Is a smartphone for seniors with simple navigation | Link | Link |
| 5. | Moodmetric | Smart Ring | Moodmetric | A Tool designed for preventive stress management allowing the user to find the balance between work and free time. | Link | Link |
| 6. | Shimmer3 GSR+ | Stress Sensor | Shimmer Sensing | suitable for measuring the electrical characteristics or conductance of the skin, as well as capturing the Optical Pulse/PPG (Photoplethysmogram) signal and converting it to estimate heart rate (HR) | Link | Image |
| 7. | SymGym | Fitness platform | SymGym | SymGym is a training system that integrates exercise, video games, and social network into one fitness solution. | Link | Link |
| 8. | Samsung Fit | Smart bracelet | Samsung | It is a fitness bracelet that can monitor a wide range of sport parameters and can measure the quality of sleep and stress accumulated during the day. The device charging is wireless. | Link | |
| 9. | Xiaomi Mi Band 4 | Smart bracelet | Xiaomi | The new bracelet Mi Band 4 is recommended and high sports performance. The device has all the necessary applications at a small size. | Link | |
| 10. | Hexiwear | Smart watch | Micro Electronika | Hexiwear can measure temperature and humidity in addition to sports activity. It has a docking station that offers the possibility to connect more devices. | Link | |
| 11. | Samsung Watch | Smart watch | Samsung | The smart watch from Samsung has many possibilities for personalization and becomes an unique device from person to person, which makes it superior to the other devices on the market. | Link | |
| 12. | Fitbit Versa | Smart watch | Fitbit | Versa is a new device that can combine elegance with utility and performance. The device reminds you to perform breathing exercises when you are stressed. | Link |
5. Microsoft Azure
Azure is a complete cloud platform that can host your existing application infrastructure, provide compute-based services tailored for your application development needs, or even augment your on-premises applications. Azure integrates the cloud services that you need to develop, test, deploy, and manage your applications—while taking advantage of the efficiencies of cloud computing. By hosting your applications in Azure, you can start small and easily scale your application as your customer demand grows. Azure also offers the reliability that’s needed for high-availability applications, even including failover between different regions. You can easily manage all of your services remotely from one location [1].
Azure provides several cloud-based compute offerings to run your application so that you don’t have to worry about the infrastructure details. You can easily scale up or scale out your resources as your application usage grows. Azure offers services that cover the spectrum—from providing infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) to give you full control over your application hosting, through platform-as-a-service (PaaS) where the services are hosted for you, to true serverless hosting where all you need to do is write your code.
5.1. App service
App Service is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering of Microsoft Azure. Create web and mobile apps for any platform or device. Integrate your apps with SaaS solutions, connect with on-premises applications, and automate your business processes. Azure runs your apps on fully managed virtual machines (VMs), with your choice of shared VM resources or dedicated VMs.
App Service includes the web and mobile capabilities that we previously delivered separately as Azure Websites and Azure Mobile Services. It also includes new capabilities for automating business processes and hosting cloud APIs. As a single integrated service, App Service lets you compose various components — websites, mobile app back ends, RESTful APIs, and business processes — into a single solution.
Features and capabilities of App Service:
- Multiple languages and frameworks – App Service has first-class support for ASP.NET, Node.js, Java, PHP, and Python. You can also run Windows PowerShell and other scripts or executables on App Service VMs.
- DevOps optimization – Set up continuous integration and deployment with Visual Studio Team Services, GitHub, or BitBucket. Promote updates through test and staging environments. Perform A/B testing. Manage your apps in App Service by using Azure PowerShell or the cross-platform command-line interface (CLI).
- Global scale with high availability – Scale up or out manually or automatically. Host your apps anywhere in Microsoft’s global datacenter infrastructure, and the App Service SLA promises high availability.
- Connections to SaaS platforms and on-premises data – Choose from more than 50 connectors for enterprise systems (such as SAP, Siebel, and Oracle), SaaS services (such as Salesforce and Office 365), and internet services (such as Facebook and Twitter). Access on-premises data using Hybrid Connections and Azure Virtual Networks.
- Security and compliance – App Service is ISO, SOC, and PCI compliant.
- Application templates – Choose from an extensive list of application templates in the Azure Marketplace that let you use a wizard to install popular open-source software such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
- Visual Studio integration – Dedicated tools in Visual Studio streamline the work of creating, deploying, and debugging [2].
Workflow
Azure App Service is a cloud service that’s designed to solve the practical problems that engineers face today. App Service focuses on providing superior developer productivity without compromising on the need to deliver applications at cloud scale.
App Service also provides the features and frameworks that are necessary for creating enterprise line-of-business applications while supporting developers with the most popular development languages (such as Microsoft .NET, Java, PHP, Node.js, and Python). With App Service, developers can:
- Build highly scalable web apps.
- Quickly build Mobile Apps back ends with a set of easy-to-use mobile capabilities such as data back ends, user authentication, and push notifications.
- Implement, deploy, and publish APIs with API Apps.
- Tie business applications together into workflows and transform data with Logic Apps.
All app types rely on the scalable and flexible Web Apps platform, which enables developers to have an optimized full lifecycle experience from app design to app maintenance. The lifecycle capabilities enable the following:
- Quick app creation. Start from scratch or pick an operational support system (OSS) package from the Azure Marketplace.
- Continuous deployment. Automatically deploy new code from popular source control solutions such as TFS, GitHub, and Bitbucket, and sync content from online storage services such as OneDrive and Dropbox.
- Test in production. Smoothly create pre-production environments and manage the amount of traffic that’s going to them. Debug in the cloud when needed, and roll back if issues are found.
- Running asynchronous tasks and batch jobs. Run code in a background process or activate your code based on events (such as messages landing in an Azure Storage queue) and scheduled times (CRON).
- Scaling the app. Use one of many options to automatically scale your service horizontally and vertically based on traffic and resource utilization. Configure private environments that are dedicated to your apps.
- Maintaining the app. Use many of the debugging and diagnostics features to stay ahead of problems and to efficiently resolve them either in real time (with features such as auto-healing and live debugging) or after the fact by analyzing logs and memory dumps.
Put together, the App Service capabilities enable developers to focus on their code and reach a stable, highly scalable production state quickly. With the API Apps and Logic Apps features, developers can build real-world enterprise applications bridging barriers between business solutions as well as on-premises to cloud integration.
5.2. Web apps
Web Apps is a compute platform that is optimized for hosting websites and web applications. This platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering of Microsoft Azure lets you focus on your business logic while Azure takes care of the infrastructure to run and scale your apps.
5.3. Cloud Services
Microsoft Azure Cloud Services is an example of a platform-as-a-service (PaaS). Like Azure App Service, this technology is designed to support applications that are scalable, reliable, and inexpensive to operate. In the same way that App Service is hosted on virtual machines (VMs), so too is Azure Cloud Services. However, you have more control over the VMs. You can install your own software on VMs that use Azure Cloud Services, and you can access them remotely.
5.4. Virtual machines
Azure Virtual Machines is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering from Microsoft Azure. Like other public cloud providers, Azure enables you to create and use virtual machines in the cloud. Azure Virtual Machines simply provides these virtual machines and related resources.
5.5. Azure and Internet of Things
Azure Internet of Things (IoT) is a collection of Microsoft-managed cloud services that connect, monitor, and control billions of IoT assets. In simpler terms, an IoT solution consists of one or more IoT devices and one or more back-end services running in the cloud that communicate with each other [8].
IoT device connectivity
An IoT device is typically made up of a circuit board with sensors attached that use WiFi to connect to the internet. For example:
- A pressure sensor on a remote oil pump.
- Temperature and humidity sensors in an air conditioning unit.
- An accelerometer in an elevator.
- Presence sensors in a room.
There is a wide variety of devices available from different manufacturers to build your solution. For a list of devices certified to work with Azure IoT Hub, see the Azure Certified for IoT device catalog. For prototyping, you can use devices such as a MXChip IoT DevKit or a Raspberry Pi. The Devkit has built-in sensors for temperature, pressure, humidity, and a gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer. The Raspberry Pi allows you to attach many different types of sensor.
The Azure IoT Device SDKs allow you to build apps that run on your devices so they can perform the tasks you need. With the SDKs, you can send telemetry to your IoT hub, receive messages and updates from the cloud, and more.
Device connectivity requirements
A typical IoT solution requires secure, reliable communication between devices and the solution back end. Devices have different characteristics compared to other clients such as browsers and mobile apps. IoT devices:
- Are often embedded systems with no human operator.
- Can be deployed in remote locations, where physical access is expensive.
- May only be reachable through the solution back end. There is no other way to interact with the device.
- May have limited power and processing resources.
- May have intermittent, slow, or expensive network connectivity.
- May need to use proprietary, custom, or industry-specific application protocols.
- Can be created using a large set of popular hardware and software platforms.
In addition to the requirements above, any IoT solution must also deliver scale, security, and reliability. The resulting set of connectivity requirements is hard and time-consuming to implement using traditional technologies such as web containers and messaging brokers. Azure IoT Hub and the IoT Device SDKs make it easier to implement solutions that meet these requirements.
A device can communicate directly with a cloud gateway endpoint, or if the device cannot use any of the communications protocols that the cloud gateway supports, it can connect through an intermediate gateway. For example, the Azure IoT protocol gateway can perform protocol translation if devices cannot use any of the protocols that IoT Hub supports.
Data processing and analytics
In the cloud, an IoT solution back end is where most of the data processing occurs, such as filtering and aggregating telemetry and routing it to other services. The IoT solution back end:
- Receives telemetry at scale from your devices and determines how to process and store that data.
- May enable you to send commands from the cloud to specific device.
- Provides device registration capabilities that enable you to provision devices and to control which devices are permitted to connect to your infrastructure.
- Enables you to track the state of your devices and monitor their activities.
In the predictive maintenance scenario, the solution back end stores historical telemetry data. The back end can use this data to use to identify patterns that indicate maintenance is due on a specific pump.
IoT solutions can include automatic feedback loops. For example, an analytics module in the back end can identify from telemetry that the temperature of a specific device is above normal operating levels. The solution can then send a command to the device, instructing it to take corrective action.
Presentation and business connectivity
The presentation and business connectivity layer allows end users to interact with the IoT solution and the devices. It enables users to view and analyze the data collected from their devices. These views can take the form of dashboards or BI reports that can display both historical data or near real-time data. For example, an operator can check on the status of particular pumping station and see any alerts raised by the system. This layer also allows integration of the IoT solution back end with existing line-of-business applications to tie into enterprise business processes or workflows. For example, the predictive maintenance solution can integrate with a scheduling system that books an engineer to visit a pumping station when the solution identifies a pump in need of maintenance [8].
5.6. Azure IoT Hub
Azure IoT Hub is a fully managed service that enables reliable and secure bidirectional communications between millions of IoT devices and a solution back end. Azure IoT Hub:
- Provides reliable device-to-cloud and cloud-to-device messaging at scale.
- Enables secure communications using per-device security credentials and access control.
- Provides extensive monitoring for device connectivity and device identity management events.
- Includes device libraries for the most popular languages and platforms.
6. IBM Cloud
IBM Cloud (formerly known as Bluemix) is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) developed by IBM. It supports several programming languages and services as well as integrated DevOps to build, run, deploy and manage applications on the cloud. IBM Cloud is based on Cloud Foundry open technology and runs on SoftLayer infrastructure. Bluemix supports several programming languages including Java, Node.js, Go, PHP, Swift, Python, Ruby Sinatra, Ruby on Rails and can be extended to support other languages such as Scala through the use of buildpacks [10].
6.1. Apps
You can create apps, manage apps, and view app services. An app service is a ready-to-use capability that is hosted by IBM Cloud. Services are available to be used standalone or to be bound with apps.
6.2. Services
Services are ready-to-use capabilities that are hosted by IBM Cloud. Some services allow you to manage data, while other services provide analytics or cognitive capabilities for your apps. You can also create custom services.
6.3. Infrastructure
You can deploy apps into a shared multi-tenant cloud environment or into a dedicated single-tenant cloud environment.
6.4. IBM Cloud Cloud Foundry architecture
In general, you don’t have to worry about the operating system and infrastructure layers when running apps on IBM Cloud in Cloud Foundry. Layers such as root filesystems and middleware components are abstracted so that you can focus on your application code. However, you can learn more about these layers if you need specifics on where your app is running.
6.5. IBM Cloud Cloud Foundry workflow
You can deploy apps to IBM Cloud in a couple of ways. How you deploy your app depends on factors such as the type of app and where the app source is located [11].
6.6. Cloud Integration API
The IBM Cloud Integration API provides a RESTful interface to help you manage your IBM Cloud integrations.
6.7. Characteristics
IBM Cloud provides infrastructure with highest levels of security, with more than 60 IBM data centers worldwide. IBM Cloud allows users to deploy and access virtualized IT resources on demand. Its data centers around the world provide multiple cloud deployment models and network access control for protection and network security. The platform provides an integrated experience for rapid application development with native cloud services.
