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

Content

Introduction and Aim Approach Results from Fieldtrials Conclusion

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

e-HOME – reminders & call for help

e-HOME – easy to use (video) phone

Field Trials

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.

Presence in living room 9 July

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.

eHome in demo apartment Schwechat

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: subasi@igw.tuwien.ac.at

Web site: www.aat.tuwien.ac.at/ehome/