Housing is a multifaceted topic. The ICMA survey emphasizes the stagnation in the availability of “…programs to provide home maintenance and repair assistance, home modification and targeted service delivery to meet the needs of older adults (e.g. backyard trash collection, sidewalk snow removal).” ¹. The recent emergence of services like Google Home, voice recognition and related technology products can have a significant impact on not only aging adults but also on people with physical impairments. These services also relates to the health monitoring of older adults for “vital signs”. ². Stony Brook University has an instrumented “future home” which will be utilized for research from multiple perspectives. Smart delivery technologies (such as Amazon’s dash button which wirelessly completes many household item orders, and deliveries with drones) are crucial to satisfy the needs for older adults who are relatively less mobile. However, it is unclear how older adults can interact with these technologies in the most effective way given that many have physical and cognitive limitations, e.g., inability to type or having difficulties in uttering voice command especially immigrants with stronger non-English accent.

One aim of this RCN is to facilitate research toward developing natural and intuitive human-system interaction methods specifically for the aging population. Furthermore, much research and development is needed to create a truly smart and supportive environment for older adults. Currently, most commercial products are reactive systems; they answer questions and response to order, but they do not proactively provide assistance. Proactive assistance is very important for older adults (physically and emotionally). However, it is difficult to achieve due to the inability of machines to understand humans’ intents and predict their future actions. This RCN will create a research community to develop human behavior analysis technologies that overcome this barrier. Another direction of this RCN is to identify and study privacy concerns of older adults. Smart homes inevitably require sensor deployment, which obviously raise many privacy concerns. Where and what sensors can be used will be a subject of study in this RCN. Home-of-the-Future, a lab designed in the form of a one-bedroom apartment on the Stony Brook campus will help facilitate such research directions. Such technologies is RCN’s vision for a living environment at residential and nursing homes in the near future where technology is integrated to improve life quality.