Acceptance of smart home technologies for aging in place

Résumé En

As life expectancy rises, the aging of the French population continues. Demographic forecasts by the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE-2019) predict a sharp increase in the proportion of people over the age of 60 until 2035 and estimate that 4 million of them will be losing their autonomy by 2050. As for the majority of Europeans, this evolution is accompanied by a widely shared desire to stay at home as long as possible. So, how can we address this combined issue of loss of autonomy and aging at home ? One of the solutions is technological and concerns the smart home specially designed for seniors.Smart home technologies support aging in place and bring real benefits to the health and well-being of seniors in addition to the energy savings, comfort and security they can provide. These goals can be achieved by combining IoT and AI technologies in order to provide services based mainly on the recognition of activities and the detection of anomalies and risk situations that seniors may face at home. The current market offer is mostly oriented to home automation in a broad sense and is poorly adapted to the needs of the elderly. The design of such a solution must be articulated to its adoption, which is a critical issue among the elderly. A systematic review based on models of acceptance of technologies by seniors followed by interviews highlighted the significance of various acceptance and rejection factors that we will present at the congress. In view of the results, it is essential to closely accompany the user-centered development process of AI-based smart home solutions with inquiries that address the limitations related mainly to their usefulness, personalization and evolution over time, accessibility, and ease of use given seniors' lack of technology familiarity.