Some contributions to smart assistive technologies

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation is built upon a number of scientific contributions conductedduring the last decade with the general aim of producing a new generation of smart,personalized and pervasive assistive systems. The research relevant to this Thesis spansthrough three different but interrelated technological domains.The first domain is Universal Accessibility, where the focus was the design,implementation and validation of architectures for the provision of universal access to localdevices and online services, specifically for digital TV.The second domain is Decision Support where we have designed, implemented andvalidated architectures that (i) are enriched semantically, (ii) are able to learn fromexperience, and (iii) show high adaptivity to capture, learn, reuse and evolve the experienceof the decision makers, with a special emphasis on Clinical Decision Support systems.The third domain is Assistive Technologies, where we have tackled interactivitychallenges for people with different types of disabilities, studying how to achieve naturalinteraction in Ambient Assisted Living environments, engaging virtual environments fortelerehabilitation, and outdoors assisted navigation for visually impaired people.