Maisons Vill'Âge®: Smart use of home automation for healthy aging

Abstract

As part of a PhD thesisat the Loria research center, National Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine (INPL), "Maisons Vill'Âge®" a new concept of building smart home by integrating telehealthcare and home automation systems, is developed in France. The segment of population, we are targeting is the senior citizens. The healthcare system uses home automation sensors and other environmental sensors like bed and chair sensors to monitor the activity level of the elderly. Activity patterns are analyzed by an intelligent application which is based on Fuzzy Logic to find any unusual behavior. The system is also equipped with wireless medical sensors to monitor the health situation of the elderly; it uses also a wireless sensor network to detect falls. The system detects health abnormalities at an early stage through the frequent monitoring of physiological data. This paper presents a brief description of the system. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.