A Modular Kitchen Terminal with Automated Food Delivery System for Enhanced Ambient Assisted Living

摘要

The kitchen is one of the most used area in the home as eating is one of the most essential needs. Food preparation as a consequence, is one of the vital activities. In the current scenario of lifestyles and family living, often elderly people are left to sustain alone at ripe ages or even the dependents do not get the assistance required. Falls are one of the leading causes of domestic fatalities and injuries in people over the age of 70 years. Kitchen is therefore one of the most likely places where the seniors are vulnerable to domestic mishaps and injuries. The aim of the project is to create an Ambient Assisted Living environment (AAL) in a kitchen terminal that is assistive to the elderly people. The critical issues of the cooking process (such as ergonomy, storage management and buying assistance), all which progressively become difficult with the aging of an individual, are targeted to be solved, by means of ubiquitous technology and automation in the home environment. So far, significant efforts have been made and systems realized that are capable of making the kitchen a fully automated environment using concepts of pervasive computing. Anyhow, there hasn't been a system yet that autonomously manages the logistics of groceries and food at a physical level in such an automated setup, considering all the stages from food provision, to storage and management. This paper is an attempt to propose and develop an Automated Delivery System (ADS) as an integral part of the overall kitchen setup, the Intelligrated Kitchen Terminal (IKT), with the aim of creating a terminal to automate the cooking process. Apart from the elderly people, who are the primary focus group, the system also targets to benefit various segments of the society to expand the scope of utility.