Simulation Support for Monitored Assisted Living System Development: A Vision for the Future

In recent years there has been rapidly increasing activity in identifying and proposing various methods for supporting the development and deployment of assisted living systems that utilize remote monitoring and modern communications technology. Such systems often rely on streams of sensor data for intelligent methods of analyzing daily activity patterns and acting on any detected exception conditions. During the initial development phase of one such system a need for defining the requirements for sensor placements, efficient sensor data formats and transmission protocols became apparent, later unit testing and the final validation phases demanded generation of large amounts of suitable sensor test data. In this paper we describe a simulator we developed in order to support both the hardware and software developments of a collaborative project for an assisted living system designed to leverage smart remote monitoring and home security technology. The rationale behind the simulator, its main functions and usage are described and the positive contribution it has made during the initial development and prototyping phases of the above system is presented.