Bruno Bouchard

Bruno Bouchard

Role:  Keynote Speaker
Affiliation: Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC)
Talk Title: Ambient Intelligence for Cognitive Assistance in Smart Homes

Abstract

In the last few years, technological devices, such as sensors and actuators, have become wildly spread in our everyday life. This reality, combined with recent advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), has led to the emergence of a new research paradigm, which is called Ambient Intelligence (AmI). Ambient intelligence refers to a multidisciplinary approach, which consist of enhancing a common environment (room, building, car, etc.) with technology (e.g. infrared sensors, pressure mats, controllable lights, speakers and screens, radio-identification devices, etc.), in order to build a system that makes decisions based on real-time information and historical data to benefit the users within this environment. In this way, technology merges with the environment, becoming nonintrusive, but remains ready to react to the occupant’s needs and to provide assistance. The main application of this AmI concept involves the development of smart homes, which are in fact houses equipped with ambient intelligent agents providing advanced, assistive services to a resident, in the performance of Activities of Daily Living (ADL). In fact, each of these ambient agents can be seen as a distinct expert system, which emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert in order to provide adapted guidance at the right moment. One of the major difficulties inherent in cognitive assistance is to identify the on-going inhabitant ADL from observed basic actions (sensor’s inputs), to detect cognitive errors, and to analyse and learn from the history of accumulated data. In a smart home, hundreds of sensors are gathering data in real time, which lead to a lot of challenges related to the Big Data paradigm. Therefore, this talk proposes to present, in a comprehensive way, the different challenges related to the very promising field of ambient assisted living.

Biography

Bruno Bouchard, Ph.D., IEEE Senior. Dr. Bouchard is an associate professor at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) and the Research Chair in Ambient Intelligence and Assistive Technology (CRIAAC). He is also the cofounder and the actual director of the LIARA lab, which develops ambient intelligent systems, smart home devices, and assistive technologies dedicated to people with cognitive impairment. The lab conducts real size experiments with users in a smart home prototype infrastructure financed by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). His research has the support of multiples public and private sponsors, such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Fonds de recherche du Québec Nature et Technologies (FRQNT), the Quebec strategic research group in Ingénierie des technologies interactives en réadaptation  (INTER), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Groupe Lokia, Bell Canada, Sermax, Solution TLM, Tag Tracking, Protection EM, etc.