Design and virtualization of intelligent systems for the management of assistive environments

The global population ageing is posing unprecedented challenges. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims at the extension of the time older adults can live in their preferred environment, by promoting the development of Information & Communications Technology to support active and healthy ageing. This thesis faces the issues raised by the scientific literature related to AAL: the need of interoperability between AAL services, the lack of a systematic design of AAL systems, and an unsatisfactory acceptance of AAL technology. The thesis proposes the use of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering and Agent-Oriented Programming as the ideal paradigms to cover all the development phases of intelligent systems to manage assistive environments, such as smart homes. The properties of agents and Multi-Agent Systems, as defined in Artificial Intelligence literature, allow to build modular and interoperable systems suitable for the management of networks of sensors and actuators in smart homes. In such context, one contribution of this thesis is the Virtual Carer, a Multi-Agent System based on the Belief-Desire-Intention paradigm for the management of a smart home and the health monitoring of an assisted person. Moreover, the thesis advocates the use of serious games to increase end-users' awareness towards the enabling technologies for AAL. The thesis presents Smart Tales, an awareness game based on the virtualization of a smart home. Its goal is to promote the concept of AAL and its technologies to the general audience. In Smart Tales, the player covers the role of a smart home resident who is skeptical about the unobtrusiveness of the home, and tries to cheat sensors. While doing so, the player gets the informative content of the game and learns the basics on AAL and sensor technology. Beside the design of the game, this thesis presents the results of a formative evaluation with ten users, which shows promising results about the learning effectiveness and the usability of Smart Tales.