scholarly journals A Radar-Based Smart Sensor for Unobtrusive Elderly Monitoring in Ambient Assisted Living Applications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Diraco ◽  
Alessandro Leone ◽  
Pietro Siciliano
Keyword(s):  
Technology Acceptance ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Vital Signs ◽  
Ultra Wideband ◽  
Daily Activities ◽  
Smart Sensor ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Ambient Lighting ◽  
Wideband Radar

Continuous in-home monitoring of older adults living alone aims to improve their quality of life and independence, by detecting early signs of illness and functional decline or emergency conditions. To meet requirements for technology acceptance by seniors (unobtrusiveness, non-intrusiveness, privacy-preservation), this study presents and discusses a new smart sensor system for the detection of abnormalities during daily activities, based on ultra-wideband radar providing rich, not privacy-sensitive, information useful for sensing both cardiorespiratory and body movements, regardless of ambient lighting conditions and physical obstructions (through-wall sensing). The radar sensing is a very promising technology, enabling the measurement of vital signs and body movements at a distance, and thus meeting both requirements of unobtrusiveness and accuracy. In particular, impulse-radio ultra-wideband radar has attracted considerable attention in recent years thanks to many properties that make it useful for assisted living purposes. The proposed sensing system, evaluated in meaningful assisted living scenarios by involving 30 participants, exhibited the ability to detect vital signs, to discriminate among dangerous situations and activities of daily living, and to accommodate individual physical characteristics and habits. The reported results show that vital signs can be detected also while carrying out daily activities or after a fall event (post-fall phase), with accuracy varying according to the level of movements, reaching up to 95% and 91% in detecting respiration and heart rates, respectively. Similarly, good results were achieved in fall detection by using the micro-motion signature and unsupervised learning, with sensitivity and specificity greater than 97% and 90%, respectively.

scholarly journals They don't care about us! Care personnel's perspectives on Ambient Assisted Living technology usage: a scenario-based quantitative study (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Offermann-van Heek ◽  
Martina Ziefle
Keyword(s):  
Technology Acceptance ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Assistive Technologies ◽  
Care Staff ◽  
Technology Usage ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Professional Care

BACKGROUND Demographic change represents enormous burdens for the care sectors resulting in high proportions of (older) people in need of care and a lack of care staff. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies have the potential to support the bottlenecks in care supply, but are not yet in widespread use in professional care contexts. OBJECTIVE The study aims for investigating professional caregivers' AAL technology acceptance, their perception of specific technologies, data handling, perceived benefits, and barriers. In particular, the study focuses on perspectives on AAL technologies differing between care professionals working in diverse care contexts in order to examine to what extent the care context influences the acceptance of assistive technologies. METHODS An scenario-based online questionnaire (n = 170) was carried out focusing on professional care givers in medical, geriatric, and care of disabled people. The participants were asked for their perceptions concerning specific technologies, specific types of gathered data, potential benefits, and barriers of AAL technology usage. RESULTS The care context significantly impacted the evaluations of AAL technologies (F(14,220) = 2.514; P = .002). Professional caregivers of disabled people had a significantly more critical attitude towards AAL technologies than medical and geriatric caregivers: indicated by a) being the only caregiver group with rejecting evaluations of AAL technology acceptance (F(2,118) = 4.570; P = .01) and specific technologies (F(2,118) = 11.727; P = .000) applied for gathering data and b) by the comparatively lowest agreements referring to the evaluations of data types (F(2,118) = 4.073; P = .02) which are allowed to be gathered. CONCLUSIONS AAL technology acceptance is seen critical out of technology implementation reasons, especially in the care of people with disabilities. AAL technologies in care contexts have to be tailored to care professional's needs and concerns ("care about us"). The results contribute to a broader understanding of professional caregivers needs referring to specific data and technology configurations and encloses major differences concerning diverse care contexts. Integrating these findings into user group-tailored technology concepts and communication strategies will support a sustainable adoption of AAL systems in professional care contexts.

Instrumenting the eHome and Preparing Elderly Pilots

2015 ◽  
pp. 335-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Panagiotis E. Antoniou ◽  
Evdokimos Konstantinidis ◽  
Antonis S. Billis ◽  
Giorgos Bamparopoulos ◽  
Marianna S. Tsatali ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Living ◽  
Healthcare Costs ◽  
Healthy Lifestyle ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Daily Activities ◽  
World Population ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
First World

In this chapter the lessons learnt from the build-up and integration of the USEFIL are demonstrated. First an introduction to Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) platforms, the infrastructure for eHomes of any purpose eHome is presented, in the context of their emergence as a viable way for managing healthcare costs in an aging first world population. Then technical and sustainability issues that are present after several years of maturation are touched upon. The USEFIL project's aim at an AAL platform that utilizes low cost “off-the-shelf” technologies in order to develop immediately applicable services, to assist elderly people in maintaining an independent, healthy lifestyle and program of daily activities is then briefly discussed. Afterwards, the methodological framework as well as principal results of the preparation and running of the pre-piloting phase of that platform are presented. Closing, current trends are explored in conjunction with future directions as triggered by this project in the context of cognitive impaired elderly support.

A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Ambient Assisted Living

2011 ◽  
pp. 76-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Ziefle ◽  
Carsten Röcker ◽  
Wiktoria Wilkowska ◽  
Kai Kasugai ◽  
Lars Klack ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Technology Acceptance ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Medical Engineering ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Smart Healthcare ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research Project ◽  
Independent Life

This chapter illustrates the different disciplinary design challenges of smart healthcare systems and presents an interdisciplinary approach toward the development of an integrative Ambient Assisted Living environment. Within the last years a variety of new healthcare concepts for supporting and assisting users in technology-enhanced environments emerged. While such smart healthcare systems can help to minimize hospital stays and in so doing enable patients an independent life in a domestic environment, the complexity of such systems raises fundamental questions of behavior, communication and technology acceptance. The first part of the chapter describes the research challenges encountered in the fields of medical engineering, computer science, psychology, communication science, and architecture as well as their consequences for the design, use and acceptance of smart healthcare systems. The second part of the chapter shows how these disciplinary challenges were addressed within the eHealth project, an interdisciplinary research project at RWTH Aachen University.

Circularly Polarized Ultra-Wideband Radar System for Vital Signs Monitoring

2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 2069-2075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Khee-Meng Chan ◽  
Adrian Eng-Choon Tan ◽  
Karumudi Rambabu
Keyword(s):  
Vital Signs ◽  
Radar System ◽  
Ultra Wideband ◽  
Circularly Polarized ◽  
Vital Signs Monitoring ◽  
Wideband Radar

scholarly journals Contactless Simultaneous Breathing and Heart Rate Detections in Physical Activity Using IR-UWB Radars

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5503
Author(s):  
Xinyue Zhang ◽  
Xiuzhu Yang ◽  
Yi Ding ◽  
Yili Wang ◽  
Jialin Zhou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Vital Signs ◽  
Motion Artifacts ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Ultra Wideband ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Range Resolution ◽  
Vital Signs Monitoring ◽  
Uwb Radar ◽  
Empirical Wavelet Transform

Vital signs monitoring in physical activity (PA) is of great significance in daily healthcare. Impulse Radio Ultra-WideBand (IR-UWB) radar provides a contactless vital signs detection approach with advantages in range resolution and penetration. Several researches have verified the feasibility of IR-UWB radar monitoring when the target keeps still. However, various body movements are induced by PA, which lead to severe signal distortion and interfere vital signs extraction. To address this challenge, a novel joint chest–abdomen cardiopulmonary signal estimation approach is proposed to detect breath and heartbeat simultaneously using IR-UWB radars. The movements of target chest and abdomen are detected by two IR-UWB radars, respectively. Considering the signal overlapping of vital signs and body motion artifacts, Empirical Wavelet Transform (EWT) is applied on received radar signals to remove clutter and mitigate movement interference. Moreover, improved EWT with frequency segmentation refinement is applied on each radar to decompose vital signals of target chest and abdomen to vital sign-related sub-signals, respectively. After that, based on the thoracoabdominal movement correlation, cross-correlation functions are calculated among chest and abdomen sub-signals to estimate breath and heartbeat. The experiments are conducted under three kinds of PA situations and two general body movements, the results of which indicate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed approach.

scholarly journals They Don’t Care About Us! Care Personnel’s Perspectives on Ambient Assisted Living Technology Usage: Scenario-Based Survey Study

10.2196/10424 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. e10424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Offermann-van Heek ◽  
Martina Ziefle
Keyword(s):  
Technology Acceptance ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Technology Implementation ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Assistive Technologies ◽  
Care Staff ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Technology Usage ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Professional Care

Background Demographic change represents enormous burdens for the care sectors, resulting in high proportions of (older) people in need of care and a lack of care staff. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies have the potential to support the bottlenecks in care supply but are not yet in widespread use in professional care contexts. Objective The objective of our study was to investigate professional caregivers’ AAL technology acceptance and their perception regarding specific technologies, data handling, perceived benefits, and barriers. In particular, this study focuses on the perspectives on AAL technologies differing between care professionals working in diverse care contexts to examine the extent to which the care context influences the acceptance of assistive technologies. Methods A Web-based survey (N=170) was carried out focusing on professional caregivers including medical, geriatric, and disabled people’s caregivers. Based on a scenario, the participants were asked for their perceptions concerning specific technologies, specific types of gathered data, and potential benefits of and barriers to AAL technology usage. Results The care context significantly impacted the evaluations of AAL technologies (F14,220=2.514; P=.002). Professional caregivers of disabled people had a significantly more critical attitude toward AAL technologies than medical and geriatric caregivers, indicated (1) by being the only caregiver group that rejected evaluations of AAL technology acceptance (F2,118=4.570; P=.01) and specific technologies (F2,118=11.727; P<.001) applied for gathering data and (2) by the comparatively lowest agreements referring to the evaluations of data types (F2,118=4.073, P=.02) that are allowed to be gathered. Conclusions AAL technology acceptance is critical because of technology implementation reasons, especially in the care of people with disabilities. AAL technologies in care contexts have to be tailored to care professional’s needs and concerns (“care about us”). The results contribute to a broader understanding of professional caregivers’ needs referring to specific data and technology configurations and enclose major differences concerning diverse care contexts. Integrating these findings into user group-tailored technology concepts and communication strategies will support a sustainable adoption of AAL systems in professional care contexts.

scholarly journals Field test of innovative digital technical assistance systems in the outpatient and inpatient care

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-418
Author(s):  
Ulrich H. P. Fischer ◽  
Jens-Uwe Just ◽  
Matthias Haupt
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Living ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Vital Signs ◽  
Field Tests ◽  
Modular System ◽  
Clear Trend ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Assistance Systems

Abstract The tecLA project developed a modular system for the area of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) that enables older people to have simple, intuitive access to medical and technical assistance systems. A commercially available AAL application portal has been subjected to acceptance tests and optimizations and has proven itself in field tests. Furthermore, when comparing the self-assessment values to cognitive measures before and after the intervention, a clear trend towards more positive values in the post-test was recorded. It was also shown that the use of the system has very positive effects on communication behavior and cognitive selfassessment. The nurses and doctors can follow the vital signs online in the patient's file and evaluate them immediately.

scholarly journals ComfOnt: A Semantic Framework for Indoor Comfort and Energy Saving In Smart Homes

Electronics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 1449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele Spoladore ◽  
Atieh Mahroo ◽  
Alberto Trombetta ◽  
Marco Sacco
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Context Awareness ◽  
Smart Home ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Daily Activities ◽  
Sensors And Actuators ◽  
Semantic Framework ◽  
Indoor Comfort

This work introduces ComfOnt, a semantic framework developed within the context of ambient assisted living, context awareness, and ambient intelligence Italian research projects. ComfOnt leverages knowledge regarding Smart Home inhabitants and their particular needs, the devices deployed inside the domestic environment (appliances, sensors, and actuators), the amount of their energy consumption, and indoor comfort metrics to provide dwellers with customized services. Developed reusing widely adopted ontologies, ComfOnt aims at providing inhabitants with the possibility of having personalized indoor comfort in their living environments and at helping them in scheduling their daily activities requiring appliances; in fact, the proposed semantic framework enables the representation of appliances’ energy consumption and the energy profile of the Smart Home, thus assisting the dwellers in avoiding power cuts and fostering energy savings. ComfOnt serves as a knowledge base for a prototypical application (DECAM) dedicated to Smart Home inhabitants; the architecture and the functionalities of DECAM are here presented.

scholarly journals Non-Contact Vital Signs Monitoring of Dog and Cat Using a UWB Radar

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengfei Wang ◽  
Yangyang Ma ◽  
Fulai Liang ◽  
Yang Zhang ◽  
Xiao Yu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Health Assessment ◽  
Pressure Sensors ◽  
Vital Signs ◽  
Noise Removal ◽  
Ultra Wideband ◽  
Response To Treatment ◽  
Vital Signs Monitoring ◽  
Mode Decomposition ◽  
Wideband Radar

As pets are considered members of the family, their health has received widespread attention. Since pets cannot talk and complain when they feel uncomfortable, monitoring vital signs becomes very helpful in disease detection, as well as observing their progression and response to treatment. In this study, we proposed an ultra-wideband radar-based, non-contact animal vital sign monitoring scheme that could monitor the breathing and heart rate of a pet in real-time. The primary advantage of the ultra-wideband radar was its ability to operate remotely without electrodes or wires and through any clothing or fur. Because of the existing noise and clutter in non-contact detection, background noise removal was applied. Furthermore, the respiration rate was directly obtained through spectrum analysis, while the heartbeat signal was extracted by the variational mode decomposition algorithm. By using electrocardiogram measurements, we verified the accuracy of the radar technology in detecting the anesthetized animals’ respiratory rate and heart rate. Besides, three beagles and five cats in a non-sedated state were measured by radar and contact pressure sensors simultaneously; the experimental results showed that radar could effectively measure the respiration of cats and dogs, and the accuracy rate was over 95%. Due to its excellent performance, the proposed method has the potential to become a new choice in application scenarios, such as pet sleep monitoring and health assessment.

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