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What is Free to Breathe?

Free to breathe

FREE TO BREATHE is an interacting monitoring system thought for people affected by allergies (in the specific allergies for air particles), with the aim of supporting them and their whole family in their daily lives by making a safe area out of their home. Nowadays infact many people have this type of allergy problem that give them troubles during daytime and want to feel at ease at least in their own home.

From asthma to rhinitis, from conjunctivitis to hives, all those symptoms could be caused by the presence of a particular allergen in the air. It is studied that main causes of this allergic attacks are the presence in the air of allergenic substances (such as mites, pollen and mold) but also chemical substances (contained for example in cigarette smoke or perfumes) or wrong ambient conditions: excessive humidity to name one.

We imagine a system that works following the four steps of AmI: FtB will analyze everything it can in the room where you decide to install it and will adjust the parameters of the room in order to be beneficial to your health and consequently augment you comfort. It will also interact with you telling the expected condition outside and asking you questions that will allow it to make itself better all alone!

Let’s think about how this system will improve your life and the functionality of your house:

The risk of starting coughing or worse of having an attack because of the substances present in the air will be drastically reduced; it will be FtB’s duty to sense the presence of allergenic substances and eliminate them rapidly. The room is too cold? Or maybe too hot? Too humid? That could be problematic, but don’t worry, you won’t have to move a finger, our system will provide to sensible regulations all alone!

FtB doesn’t forget that external climatic conditions are nothing to joke neither, on the contrary it will constantly monitor them through your internet connection and will operate proactive regulations. Plus, it will also provide you tips on how to face the day or going out with low risks!

Least but not last, we want to tell you this: Ftb isn’t a cold heartless machine, it is your friend! You’re not entirely satisfied with its behavior? Just answer its questions and it will try to adjust itself to match your requirements and desires!

More specific

FtB is designed in order to maintain an acceptable particles level inside a room. All its features and specifications are implemented in order to fullfil to this aim. In particular the objective of the device is to make the minimum work in order to keep the air in the room clean and acceptable for the user. From the user interface FtB will acquire the user's feedback, from internet the estimated pollen level outside, from the sensor the particles level. With all those information it will decide if use or not a filter/fan to decrease the particles level. All the data will be also saved on a database in order to be re-used and the device could be forced to change its behavior by the user.

The device can not do the following things: make difference from different kind of pollen, sense any parameters from the user's body (maybe in a later version), sense directly outside the room, sense anything not related to the allergy [only particles,temperature and humidity for now], act in order to prevent wrong behavior of the user. It's also not guarantee that it will work properly if used in condition different from those described expicitly.

Main Themes

For the elaboration of this project was used four main step, in order to create an "Intelligent device" and also an "Ambient-oriented system". Moreover the project is also inserted in the "Health and Well-being" theme.

Sensing

Air composition will be constantly monitored (with focus on detecting the presence of substances which can be considered dangerous for the health of the subject) through ad hoc sensors placed in the room and so will be for temperature and humidity.

Reasoning

On the base of what the sensors read, the system will analyse data and detect dangerous situations from which an attack could grow up. Plus, a connection will be established with a reliable weather forecast site, so that data on the external environment will be available too: thanks to that it will be possible to study suitable regulations to internal parameters even before the incoming of a wrong internal condition and useful tips on a right way to face internal and especially external issues will be given to the user in real time.

Acting

If a hot situation is detected during the reasoning phase the system will aim at adjusting the conditions of the room: temperature, humidity, air composition (pushing in fresh air from a safe source and pushing away the bad one). Operations connected with the regulation of environmental parameters will be done in advance of the incoming of a problem if climatic and external conditions will require it, in order to improve users comfort as much as possible. Finally, the system will be given some features it will exploit to communicate with the user in clear, fast and suitable ways every time something useful has to be notified.

Interacting

The device can be used as a personal assistant which will transform the house in a safe area for everyone, especially for people with allergies. Why? The device will warn you if there is a dangerous situation, but there is more. In order to optimize its future behavior the device will ask you to judge its work through well focused questions and will try to adjust its functions in order to fulfill your desires.

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Specifics

Are you interested in our device? You would like to know more? Let's see Requirements and Archtecture!

Requirements Architecture

When the world is filled with red lights signaling danger, the world is safer than usual. But when it's filled with green lights signaling safety, it creates a place more dangerous than anywhere.