Hands-On Experiences in Deploying Cost-EffectiveAmbient-Assisted Living Systems

Sensors

卷:15

Grammati Pantziou¹  Charalampos Konstantopoulos²  Athanasios Dasios³  Damianos Gavalas³ 

[1] Department of Informatics, Technological Educational Institution of Athens, Athens GR-12243, Greece;

[2] Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus, Piraeus GR-18534, Greece;

[3] School of Science and Technology, Hellenic Open University, Patras GR-26335, Greece;

关键词: ambient assisted living;    smart home;    elderly;    monitoring;    wireless sensor network;    Arduino;    ZigBee;    XBee;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s150614487

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Older adults’ preferences to remain independent in their own homes along with the high costs of nursing home care have motivated the development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies which aim at improving the safety, health conditions and wellness of the elderly. This paper reports hands-on experiences in designing, implementing and operating UbiCare, an AAL based prototype system for elderly home care monitoring. The monitoring is based on the recording of environmental parameters like temperature and light intensity as well as micro-level incidents which allows one to infer daily activities like moving, sitting, sleeping, usage of electrical appliances and plumbing components. The prototype is built upon inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware (e.g., various sensors, Arduino microcontrollers, ZigBee-compatible wireless communication modules) and license-free software, thereby ensuring low system deployment costs. The network comprises nodes placed in a house’s main rooms or mounted on furniture, one wearable node, one actuator node and a centralized processing element (coordinator). Upon detecting significant deviations from the ordinary activity patterns of individuals and/or sudden falls, the system issues automated alarms which may be forwarded to authorized caregivers via a variety of communication channels. Furthermore, measured environmental parameters and activity incidents may be monitored through standard web interfaces.

【 授权许可】

Unknown