Comparative Analysis of Prominent Middleware Platforms in the Domain of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) for an Older Adults with Dementia (OAwD) Scenario

Abstract Diversification of application areas, technologies, and computational techniques in the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) domain alongside the need for a balance between reproducibility and customizability for the heterogeneous end-user groups has led towards the development of domain-specific middleware platforms, which are software frameworks that facilitate integration and communication amongst heterogeneous hardware and software components, so they can operate synergistically within a shared environment. Recent efforts that study such platforms have emphasized the need for improved evaluation methods, particularly feature-focused scenario-based evaluations. Thus, the objective of this work was to perform a comparative analysis of two prominent AAL middleware platforms and their programmability for Older Adults with Dementia (OAwD) to ultimately derive guidelines for the development of AAL systems. Mapping of a platform-independence use-case scenario to both platforms, hinted towards the need for graphical-user interfaces over text-based interfaces and application area-specific modules.