The mobile phone as a platform for assisting the independent living ...

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Chapter 1Introduction1.1 MotivationThe world population of people over the age of 65 is growing rapidly at a rate of 800,000per month. As a consequence, the healthcare and medicare market already constitutes amajor part of the world’s economy and it will only expand in years to come. Recentadvances in sensor technology, cellular networks and information technology promise toimprove the well-being of the elderly by assisting them in their daily activities andmonitoring their health status, thus enabling them to lead their lives to a larger extentindependently from healthcare institutions and their caretakers.However, the comparatively slow adoption of such systems indicates that there arecertain factors prohibiting their acceptance and use. For example, most available homecaresystems monitor the health of individuals suffering from diagnosed chronic diseases(heart disease, lung disorders, diabetes, etc.); as such, they depend on customised, costly,and difficult to use health monitoring equipment and they often confine patients to theirhomes. Less attention has been given to monitoring and maintaining the personalwellness of those elderly people who have not been diagnosed with any serious orchronic disease and who, therefore, wish or should be encouraged to live a normal life,both inside and outside their homes. The quality of life of this larger population dependsupon and may decline as a result of combined and in some cases not easily measurablephysical and psychological factors. Existing work in the direction of monitoring andimproving their lives, however, is limited to a) interactive facilities for consultation withdoctors, which, while simplifying some regular examinations, do not take advantage ofthe full potential offered by the latest advances in information and communicationtechnologies, and b) satellite location tracking systems, which, while allowing people1
suffering from memory and orientation problems to be easily traced, do not otherwiseexploit the wealth of data gathered by the location sensors.While sudden changes and, more generally, unexpected patterns in the daily behaviour ofelderly people are difficult to detect via medical data only, it is very likely that i) suchunexpected patterns can be detected by combining machine learning and input from alarger variety of sensors, and ii) that they can be used as signs that a certain disease,illness or health condition is getting worse or that is about to occur. Of course, detectingthese early signs is far from trivial, if we consider the uniqueness of each individual'spersonality, behaviour, and the diverse effects of different diseases upon this behaviour.Furthermore, early detection should not come at the cost of confining the elderly to theirhomes, nor should it rely on the assumption that elderly users will learn to controlcomplex equipment.This thesis is part of the work conducted at Mobile and Multimedia Laboratory ofAthens University of Economics and Business for the ARCHANGEL project [1] . Theaim of the ARCHANGEL project is to realise a holistic framework that will exhibit allthe aforementioned principles and test its performance in a controlled trial setting. In thiscontext, the project aims to design, implement, and validate a cost-effective, secure,adaptable and interoperable framework for learning and monitoring the daily behaviourand personal routines of the elderly using advanced sensor networking, machine learning,and controlled interaction with caretakers. In this work, we propose two separatesystems, an indoor localization system and an application to assist visually impairedpeople that could be used in the framework of ARCHANGEL project. Both proposedsolutions are based on the capabilities of today’s mobile phones.1.2 Thesis outlineThis thesis is organised as follows:Chapter 2 is a general overview of the Smart Home environment, discussing possibleclassifications and products and services provided by Smart Home solutions. At the endof the chapter we present related projects.Chapter 3 is an overview of the basics of localization with the focus on indoorpositioning. Applications, issues, demands and performance measures of indoorlocalization systems are discussed.Chapter 4 introduces the technologies used to achieve indoor positioning, focusing onBluetooth, Wi-Fi and image comparison. In addition, we review the common approaches2
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[40] Andrew M. Ladd, Kostas E. Bekr
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[65] X. Chen and A.L. Yuille, “A
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