Using CAN to retrofit houses for quadriplegic people

• Author(s): Fonseca, José ; Bartolomeu, Paulo ; Silva, Valter ; Santos, Vasco ; Abreu, Carlos ; Mota, Alexandre ; Cunha, Margarida ; Lopes, Arminda
• Date: 2008
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/6459
• Origin: RIA - Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

This paper describes the B-Live® system targetted to automate house appliances for severely impaired people, in particular quadriplegic. This system has been developed at Micro I/O for enhancing the quality of life and the independence of its potential users. The envisaged application is the retrofitting of common dwellings. The B-Live system is described and details on its software, hardware and CAN-based communications architecture are provided. A survey of the supported appliances and interfaces is presented as well as a description of the B-live configuration and operation procedures. The adequacy of the B-Live system to improve the autonomy of the envisaged users was informally evaluated by C5 and C6 patients at a demonstration house located in the CMRRC Rovisco Pais, a rehabilitation center near Aveiro, in Portugal. The conclusion is that the system has a short learning curve and can cope with the requirements of its potential users. The use of CAN in this application opens the possibility to include safety critical real-time systems in the BLive system. This is the case of the monitoring of the ventilator used for quadriplegic people that require breath assistance. DETI