DESIGN A HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM FOR MONITORING MOBILITY CHANGES OF THE ELDERLY USING INTELLIGENT ANALYSIS
Jiann-Shing Shieh, Yao-Sheng Chang, Chen-Tse Chuang, Xiang Wang · Biomedical Engineering Applications Basis and Communications · 2005
The application of microchip technology and an intelligent analysis algorithm to design a hierarchical system for monitoring mobility changes of the elderly at house is proposed in this paper. There are four levels which are environment, measurement & sensing, signal processing, and intelligent analyses to build for interpreting the mobility index of daily life according to three different sensors, such as infrared (IR) sensors for detecting human movement, mechanical switch sensors for identifying opening and closing of doors of the bookcases, and current sensors for detecting use of computer and lights. Hence, a smart box has been designed as a passive monitoring system (i.e., non-consciousness for human) where data is gathered from a number of physically distributed sensor points within the house, linked using the mains wiring as the communications medium, and then automatically transmitted over the modem system via internet to a monitoring and supervisory centre. The preliminary study has been tested successfully in volunteer's research room during six weeks in comparison with the questionnaire results. Hence, it can be seen as a demonstration of feasibility of the applicability of microchip technology and an intelligent analysis algorithm for monitoring mobility changes of the elderly at home. But, it still needs a longer series of real testing at home, perhaps to refine the rule-base, and certainly to see how widely they are applicable.