Ontological Goal Modelling for Proactive Assistive Living in Smart Environments

Existing assistive living solutions have traditionally adopted a bottom-up approach involving sensor based monitoring, data analysis to activity recognition and assistance provisioning. This approach, however, suffers from applicability and scalability issues associated with sensor density and variations in performing user activities. In an effort to alleviate these challenges, the current study proposes a goal oriented top-down approach to assistive living which offers a paradigm shift from a sensor centric view to a goal oriented view. The basic concept of the approach is that if a user’s goal can be identified, then assistance can be provided proactively through pre-defined or dynamically constructed activity related instructions. The paper first introduces the system architecture for the proposed approach. It then describes an ontological goal model to serve as the basis for such an approach. The utility of the approach is illustrated in a use scenario focused on assisting a user with their activities of daily living.