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Population aging is considered to be one of the most significant social transformations of the twenty-first century. In this paper, we evaluate the acceptability and usability of a system designed to silently monitor the activity and condition of older adults, with a particular focus on the elderly affected by cognitive decline. The system is composed of sensors that can be hidden in various wearable objects to collect data about a user and his/her surrounding environment and transmit them to a server for further elaboration. The aim is to improve safety and independence of older adults. We conducted a survey involving elderly people, their relatives and health practitioners to better assess their needs and provide them with a technology that is as little intrusive and visible as possible. The results of our survey are promising as the majority of the respondents expressed their willingness to use the proposed technology in their everyday lives.

Editorial: This special issue features six selected high quality papers from SMARTOBJECTS 2015, a Workshop on experiences with the design and implementation of smart objects, held of September 7th, 2015 in Paris, FRANCE. It focuses on experiences with the design, implementation, deployment, operation and evaluation of novel communication approaches and systems for smart objects in the emerging cooperative environments. In the first article, BAn NFC Anti-Counterfeiting Framework for ID Verification and Image Protection^, Wei Hsun Lee, Chien Ming Chou, and Szu Wen Wang propose an NFC anti-counterfeiting framework with a two-layered digital image protection mechanism. In this system, an application certificate signed by the service provider and image metadata are hidden in the personal digital image using digital watermarking, and the image metadata is protected by the secure element in the NFC device. Several procedures are designed to ensure the originality of the photo and signature images, so that the process of digital image authentication is as secure and practical as using printed images on a plastic card. The second article titled BThe Coordinated Vehicle Recovery Mechanism in City Environments^, by GwoJiun Horng, presents the design and analysis of an innovative, optimized and coordinated vehicle recovery network system. This system safeguards private property for all citizens, significantly enhances an existing vehicle recovery and anti-theft system, and improves the success rate for vehicle recovery. This study is not only applicable to a single vehicle but also considers the entire vehicle anti-theft communication network and connects all individual vehicles to an innovative, optimized and coordinated vehicle recovery network. The next article BA Network Coverage Algorithm for Message Broadcast in Vehicular Networks^, by Armir Bujari, proposes an enhancement of an existent optimal message propagation scheme proposed in the context of one dimensional vehicular networks, namely Fast-Broadcast. This proposal generalizes the former with the objective of guiding message dissemination to an entire area of interest in generic road topologies. The proposed scheme exploits bloom filter properties to further advance message propagation into the network. The fourth article is titled BWearable HUD for Ecological Field Research Applications: A Development Experience on the Design of a Wearable Mobile System^. Its authors, Saul Delabrida, Thiago D’Angelo, Ricardo Augusto Rabelo Oliveira, and Antonio Alfredo F. Loureiro, overview wearable architectures found in the literature and present a novel wearable device for monitoring ecological environments. The wearable includes a Head-UP Display (HUD) assembled with Google Card* Pietro Manzoni pmanzoni@disca.upv.es