Sadanori Ito

An Empirical Study of an RFID Mat Sensor System in a Group Home

We have been developing an RFID (radio frequency identification) mat system to assist caregivers in a group home. In Japan, the number of group homes offering home-like care for elderly persons suffering from dementia has increased considerably. Even though the smaller number of people residing in a group home makes it suitable for family-like care, the scarcity of caregivers increases the burden, especially during the night. To augment caregiver attention, we developed floor mats with embedded RFID antennae and slippers with RFID tags. These can help caregivers be aware of the activities of persons suffering from dementia by specifying whether an individual has passed over a mat in a particular corridor. This not only helps the caregivers understand such persons by reviewing their activities but also keeps them informed about their current activities. We introduced the floor mats in a real group home and confirmed the feasibility of the system. In this study, we describe the system and lessons learned from our experiment.

A layered interpretation of human interactions captured by ubiquitous sensors

We are developing the technology for an interaction corpus, a huge collection of human interaction data captured by various sensors with their machine-readable indices, in order to freely record various episodes in almost all parts of our daily life. To develop such a corpus, we have prototyped ubiquitous/wearable sensor systems that collaboratively capture human interactions from multiple points of view. The purpose of this study is to develop a systematic framework in which various applications can deal with human contexts represented as machine-readable indices. This is done in a uniform manner by explicitly separating the acquired raw data from various sensors from application semantics. This makes it possible to bridge the gaps among the context levels of data required by various applications and to capture human interactions in various situations. This paper proposes a layered model for human interaction interpretations based on a bottom-up approach. In this model, interpretations of human interactions are hierarchically abstracted so that each layer has unique semantic/syntactic information represented by machine-readable indices. We illustrate the use of our architecture through three sample applications each of which provides persons with rich opportunities for sharing their own experiences with others at a poster exhibition site. Moreover, we demonstrate the potential applicability and versatility of our approach by extending our system to another domain, a meeting situation.

Collaborative capturing, interpreting, and sharing of experiences

This paper proposes a notion of interaction corpus, a captured collection of human behaviors and interactions among humans and artifacts. Digital multimedia and ubiquitous sensor technologies create a venue to capture and store interactions that are automatically annotated. A very large-scale accumulated corpus provides an important infrastructure for a future digital society for both humans and computers to understand verbal/non-verbal mechanisms of human interactions. The interaction corpus can also be used as a well-structured stored experience, which is shared with other people for communication and creation of further experiences. Our approach employs wearable and ubiquitous sensors, such as video cameras, microphones, and tracking tags, to capture all of the events from multiple viewpoints simultaneously. We demonstrate an application of generating a video-based experience summary that is reconfigured automatically from the interaction corpus.

Aware Group Home Enhanced by RFID Technology

In Japan, the number of group homesoffering home-like care for elderly persons suffering from dementia has increased considerably. Even though the lesser number of people residing in a group home is suitable for family-like care, the shortage of caregivers increases the burden, especially during the night. To supplement this lack of attention, we developed floor mats embedded with RFID antennae and slippers with RFID tags. These can help caregivers be aware of the activities of persons suffering from dementia, by specifying whether an individual has passed over a sheet in a particular corridor. This not only helps the caregivers understand such persons by reviewing their activities, but also keeps them informed about the persons current activities.

RFID Mat Sensors in Group Home

We have been developing an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) mat system to assist caregivers in a group home. In Japan, a group home offers home-based care and service for elderly persons suffering from dementia is gaining popularity. Even though the small community of the home is suitable for family-like care, the low numbers of caregivers increases the burden especially during night time. To supplement the lack of attention, we introduce the RFID antenna sheet sensors and RFID tags embedded in slippers of the elderly persons to provide location-aware services. The system can assist the caregivers to monitor the activities of the persons with dementia by specifying whether the person passed through the sheet on the corridor. Moreover, the system not only helps the caregivers to understand the persons with dementia by reviewing their activities but also keeps them informed about the persons ongoing activities.