DEVELOPMENT OF EVOLVING MOVEMENT PROFILES USING A BODY AREA NETWORK AND INTELLIGENT AGENTS

Publicações

A distributed multiagent system architecture for body area networks applied to healthcare monitoring

Publication . Felisberto, Filipe; Laza, Rosalía; Fdez-Riverola, Florentino; Pereira, António

In the last years the area of health monitoring has grown significantly, attracting the attention of both academia and commercial sectors. At the same time, the availability of new biomedical sensors and suitable network protocols has led to the appearance of a new generation of wireless sensor networks, the so-called wireless body area networks. Nowadays, these networks are routinely used for continuous monitoring of vital parameters, movement, and the surrounding environment of people, but the large volume of data generated in different locations represents a major obstacle for the appropriate design, development, and deployment of more elaborated intelligent systems. In this context, we present an open and distributed architecture based on a multiagent system for recognizing human movements, identifying human postures, and detecting harmful activities. The proposed system evolved from a single node for fall detection to a multisensor hardware solution capable of identifying unhampered falls and analyzing the users’ movement. The experiments carried out contemplate two different scenarios and demonstrate the accuracy of our proposal as a real distributed movement monitoring and accident detection system. Moreover, we also characterize its performance, enabling future analyses and comparisons with similar approaches.

2015-03Artigo científico

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A Ubiquitous and Low-Cost Solution for Movement Monitoring and Accident Detection Based on Sensor Fusion

Publication . Felisberto, Filipe; Fdez.-Riverola, Florentino; Pereira, António

The low average birth rate in developed countries and the increase in life expectancy have lead society to face for the first time an ageing situation. This situation associated with the World’s economic crisis (which started in 2008) forces the need of equating better and more efficient ways of providing more quality of life for the elderly. In this context, the solution presented in this work proposes to tackle the problem of monitoring the elderly in a way that is not restrictive for the life of the monitored, avoiding the need for premature nursing home admissions. To this end, the system uses the fusion of sensory data provided by a network of wireless sensors placed on the periphery of the user. Our approach was also designed with a low-cost deployment in mind, so that the target group may be as wide as possible. Regarding the detection of long-term problems, the tests conducted showed that the precision of the system in identifying and discerning body postures and body movements allows for a valid monitorization and rehabilitation of the user. Moreover, concerning the detection of accidents, while the proposed solution presented a near 100% precision at detecting normal falls, the detection of more complex falls (i.e., hampered falls) will require further study.

2014-05-21Artigo científico

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Palavras-chave

, Engineering and technology ,Engineering and technology/Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

Entidade financiadora

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.

Número da atribuição

SFRH/BD/89370/2012