Experiences from Assessing Daily Activities to Increase Safety and
Comfort of Older Persons Living Alone
Paul Panek, Peter Mayer, Özge Subasi and Wolfgang L. Zagler
Institute for Design and Assessment of Technology
Vienna University of Technology
IFA 11th Global Conference on Ageing
28 May – 1 June 2012, Prague, Czech Republic
Introduction & Aim
Many research papers available about AAL systems and activity monitoring– But unclear, to what extent such systems can be
applied in real life Therefore - Aim of eHome project:
– Demonstration of practical usefulness – In daily use– Basic system with ZigBee based sensors was
developed
Approach
Daily life follows certain schedules – Given by routine– Following social and biological rhythms
eHome monitors continuously– Assessing activities in fixed time slices (e.g. 1 hour)– Triggering supportive or emergency actions if
significant deviations– Keeps private data protected inside the user’s home
Objective of eHome: Improving safety and comfort of older persons living alone at home
Approach
eHome system uses – Sensors connected via ZigBee
– Storing data in a database
– Data being processed in a small central unit
– Situated at user’s home ( privacy of data)
– Connected to the Internet.
Approach
Event triggered expert system can raise alerts based on:– Time of activities
(e.g. rising from bed compared to daily history)– Duration of selected activities
(e.g. nightly leaving of bed)– Frequency of activities
(e.g. reduction in cooking, hygiene)
Approach
Assumption of eHome is:– Even by applying a rather coarse monitoring by
a small set of sensors a sufficient insight into the user’s activity can be reached
– Even if “better” and “more” sensors would be possible this was avoided in order to Increase perspective for economic exploitation Improve the to-be-expected user acceptance
Field Trials
Extensive evaluation with – 5 research prototype systems – installed in 11 homes of older persons – over a total time of 18 months
Field Trials
ZigBee Sensors for– Door / window– Acceleration & floor
vibration (e.g. for fall detection)
– Temperature– Cooking plate temp.
(infrared)– Movement (passive
infrared) – Light
Impressions from Field Trials
Local User Interface– Touch-Screen Terminal
without typical PC look– Fits to furniture– Easy to use– Video telephone– Smart-Home Controls– Emergency Call– Internet Browser
Results
System was able to classify “usual behaviour” over time. This can be used in different ways:– Unusual sudden changes (e.g. not leaving bed in
the morning) triggering alarm– mid-term and long-term trends present
changes to care persons to let them judge about the meaning and severity of recognised changes.
Results
The system is able to learn / adapt over time its threshold parameters
Remark: Even right from the beginning the system is able to work with initial values important for practical use!
By adapting over time it will improve performance
Conclusion
Despite needs for improvement there is evidence that the system actually is considered by users and experts to have the potential to bring significant benefits in supporting older persons and carers.
eHome prototype currently is used in LLM (CIP) and KSERA (FP7) project
Costs for low quantities of basic eHome system with 3 multi-sensor boxes are 1,500 Eur.
Acknowledgements
Supported by: Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology
(FIT-IT contract number 815195).
Consortium: TU Vienna, Ceit Raltec, Kapsch Carriercom and Treventus Mechatronics.
For questions: [email protected]
Web site: www.aat.tuwien.ac.at/ehome/
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