A system for recognizing activities of daily living using everyday objects

Abstract

The population is quickly ageing. It is estimated that 25 % of the European population will be made up of people aged over 65 [9]. This ageing provokes that the government has to provide more resources to manage the elderly requirements. However, its capacity for facing them is not strong enough. In addition, there is other essential problem: the elders' rejection to move to a nursing house or to be continuously monitored. The objective is to design a model that is able to combine both interests: the independence of living in their home and the security of living in an elderly people home. We propose a system which tries to monitor user daily activities in order to provide services, currently in an alarm way, and to support the caregiver works. The system uses everyday objects to know what object the user is touching, by means of sensors, and hand-held devices to collect all the information and inform the user (or their families or even their medical assistance centre). © Springer-Verlag 2010.