Abstract
In this work, we introduce an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) system that allows to infer a potential dangerous action of an elderly person living alone at home. This inference is obtained by a specific sensorisation with sensor nodes and a reasoning layer embedded in a personal computer that learns of the users behavior patterns and advices when actual one differs significantly in the normal patterns. In this type of systems, energy is a limited resource therefore sensor devices need to be properly managed to conserve energy. In this paper, a force-capacitive transducer based sensor has been proposed, implemented and tested. This sensor is based on Electro-Mechanical Films (EMFiTM) transducer which is able to detect force variations in a quasi-passive way. The transducer is a capacitor with variable capacity depending on the force exerted on its surface. The characterization of the transducer conducted by us in this way is not present in the literature. This detection of force is used to trigger an active mechanism to measure the weight by means of the transducer capacity, now modelled by us. A low-power wireless sensor node prototype including this new sensor has been assembled and validated with a wide range of weights. The occupancy detection was successful and the power consumption of the node was increased at less than a 15%, which is acceptable for implementation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Fernández-Luque, F., Zapata, J., Ruiz, R., Iborra, E.: A wireless sensor network for assisted living at home of elderly people. In: Mira, J., Ferrández, J.M., Álvarez, J.R., de la Paz, F., Toledo, F.J. (eds.) IWINAC 2009, Part II. LNCS, vol. 5602, pp. 65–74. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Blaya, J.A.B., Palma, J., Villa, A., Perez, D., Iborra, E.: Ontology based approach to the detection of domestic problems for independent senior people. In: Mira, J., Ferrández, J.M., Álvarez, J.R., de la Paz, F., Toledo, F.J. (eds.) IWINAC 2009, Part II. LNCS, vol. 5602, pp. 55–64. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Gaddam, A., Mukhopadhyay, S., Gupta, G.: Necessity of a bed-sensor in a smart digital home to care for elder-people. In: 2008 IEEE Sensors, pp. 1340–1343 (2008), doi:10.1109/ICSENS.2008.4716693
Lekkala, J., Paajanen, M.: Emfi-new electret material for sensors and actuators. In: 1999 Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Electrets, ISE 10, pp. 743–746 (1999), doi:10.1109/ISE.1999.832151
Gaddam, A., Mukhopadhyay, S., Gupta, G.: Development of a bed sensor for an integrated digital home monitoring system. In: IEEE International Workshop on Medical Measurements and Applications, MeMeA 2008, pp. 33–38 (2008), doi:10.1109/MEMEA.2008.4542993
Gaddam, A., Mukhopadhyay, S., Gupta, G.: Intelligent bed sensor system: Design, expermentation and results. In: 2010 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS), pp. 220–225 (2010), doi:10.1109/SAS.2010.5439390
Flexiforce® Sensors - Specifications and Features, Tech. rep., Tescan, Inc.
Tazawa, H., Hashimoto, Y., Takami, M., Yufu, Y., Whittow, G.C.: Simple, noninvasive system for measuring the heart rate of avian embryos and hatchlings by means of a piezoelectric film. Med. Biol. Eng. Comput. 31(2), 129–134 (1993), http://www.biomedsearch.com/nih/Simple-noninvasive-system-measuring-heart/8331992.html
Choi, S., Jiang, Z.: A wearable cardiorespiratory sensor system for analyzing the sleep condition. Expert Syst. Appl. 35, 317–329 (2008), http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1379458.1379570 , doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2007.06.014
Thin film ferro-electret sensors, http://www.emfit.com/en/sensors/products_sensors/
Ruiz, R., Fernández-Luque, F.J., Zapata, J.: Wireless sensor network for ambient assisted living. In: Merrett, G.V., Tan, Y.K. (eds.) Wireless Sensor Networks: Application-Centric Design, InTech, pp. 127–146 (2010)
Paajanen, M.: Electromechanical film (emfi) — a new multipurpose electret material. Sensors and Actuators A: Physical 84(1-2), 95–102 (2000), http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0924424799002691
Paajanen, M.: Modelling the electromechanical film (emfi). Journal of Electrostatics 48(3-4), 193–204 (2000), http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0304388699000650
Paajanen, M., Lekkala, J., Valimaki, H.: Electromechanical modeling and properties of the electret film emfi. IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation 8(4), 629–636 (2001), doi:10.1109/94.946715
Preamplifiers for EMFIT sensors, Tech. rep., EMFIT, Ltd. (2004)
Tuncer, E., Wegener, M., Gerhard-Multhaupt, R.: Modeling electro-mechanical properties of layered electrets: application of the finite-element method. Journal of Electrostatics 63(1), 21–35 (2005), http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304388604001329 , doi:10.1016/j.elstat.2004.06.002
Sixsmith, A., Johnson, N.: A smart sensor to detect the falls of the elderly. IEEE Pervasive Comput. 3(2), 42–47 (2004), doi:10.1109/MPRV.2004.1316817
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fernandez-Luque, F., Zapata, J., Ruiz, R. (2015). Low-Power Occupancy Sensor for an Ambient Assisted Living System. In: Ferrández Vicente, J., Álvarez-Sánchez, J., de la Paz López, F., Toledo-Moreo, F., Adeli, H. (eds) Bioinspired Computation in Artificial Systems. IWINAC 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9108. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18833-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18833-1_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18832-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18833-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)