A cloud-based virtual caregiver for elderly people in a cyber physical IoT system

Abstract

In this research, we propose virtual caregiver (VCareGiver), a virtual caregiver as a cyber-physical smart home (CPSH) companion to support the daily life activities of elderly people through their gestures. The CPSH will act as a virtual caregiver who will understand the need of an elderly person and be present with him/her ubiquitously at any time and at any location within his/her house. VCareGiver will help in solving two important problems. Firstly, a large population is at their old age who needs help in their daily chores, since the family members are unable to give full support (e.g. reminding the to-do list, maintaining appointments, taking medicine on right time, sending SMS, saving energy due to consumption of electricity, controlling home appliances, etc.) due to busy schedule. Secondly, due to the old age movement problem, they need support in doing activities through gesture. In this research, we want to test the viability of the virtual caregiver as a physical assistant. The gestures of an elderly subject in the physical world are recognized by a multi-sensory IoT-based framework that is passed to the CPSH, which analyses the gestures and generates a command to perform certain physical world activity and finally produce the visualization. A proof of concept CPSH has been implemented through the web, and smartphone based applications. More than 100 different gestures have been incorporated into the CPSH system through which different daily life activities can be performed. Initial test results are very encouraging and show the prospect of such virtual caregiver, which can revolutionize the quality of life of our prospective elderly generation.