A Mobile Agents Platform for Telecare and Teleassistance

Abstract

Abstract. In order to facilitate the development and integration of new services for telecare there is a need for the design and development of an open and flexible infrastructure into which services and supporting resources can be easily plugged in. A mobile agents based approach for such infrastructure was developed in the TeleCARE project and its architecture and implemented prototype are discussed. 1 Introduction Teleassistance and provision of remote care to elderly living alone at home represents a very demanding case of distributed system. Developments in this area have to cope with some important requirements, namely: • Openness, in order to accommodate a growing number of new services and supporting devices. • Support for heterogeneity, as different users have different needs and might possess a diversity of legacy systems (e.g. computers, home appliances, domotic infrastructures). • Scalability, in order to allow the integration of a variable number of users in a telecare community. Furthermore, this area represents a very sensitive domain in the sense that it deals with critical data about individuals, raising issues of security, and the need to guarantee a high continuity of service. These are in fact some of the pre-requisites to guarantee social acceptance of any new approach to the introduction of technology in elderly care. In spite of recent developments in computer networks and pervasive computing, effective implementation of telecare systems still requires the development of open and flexible infrastructures offering some form of plug-and-play functionality. With different organizations developing different products and services, in a variety of different areas, there is a need for a common platform into which all these development may be plugged so that interoperability is possible. In this context, one of the main aims of the IST TeleCARE project was the design and development of a generic platform that allows progressive addition, at a minimal cost, of new care services, home appliances, and monitoring / assistance devices. A mobile agents approach is adopted as the base development paradigm. Although