A Review of Assistive Technologies for Activities of Daily Living of Elderly

One of the distinct features of this century has been the population of older adults which has been on a constant rise. Elderly people have several needs and requirements due to physical disabilities, cognitive issues, weakened memory and disorganized behavior, that they face with increasing age. The extent of these limitations also differs according to the varying diversities in elderly, which include age, gender, background, experience, skills, knowledge and so on. These varying needs and challenges with increasing age, limits abilities of older adults to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) in an independent manner. To add to it, the shortage of caregivers creates a looming need for technology-based services for elderly people, to assist them in performing their daily routine tasks to sustain their independent living and active aging. To address these needs, this work consists of making three major contributions in this field. First, it provides a rather comprehensive review of assisted living technologies aimed at helping elderly people to perform ADLs. Second, the work discusses the challenges identified through this review, that currently exist in the context of implementation of assisted living services for elderly care in Smart Homes and Smart Cities. Finally, the work also outlines an approach for implementation, extension and integration of the existing works in this field for development of a much-needed framework that can provide personalized assistance and user-centered behavior interventions to elderly as per their varying and ever-changing needs.