Human activity recognition in smart homes based on passive RFID localization

Abstract

Modern societies are facing an important ageing of their population leading to arising economical and sociological challenges such as the pressure on health support services for semi-autonomous persons. Smart home technology is considered by many researchers as a promising potential solution to help supporting the needs of elders. It aims to provide cognitive assistance by taking decisions, such as giving hints, suggestions and reminders, with different kinds of effectors (light, sound, screen, etc.) to a resident suffering from cognitive deficits in order to foster their autonomy. To implement such technology, the first challenge we need to overcome is the recognition of the ongoing inhabitant activity of daily living (ADL). Moreover, to assist him correctly, we also need to be able to detect the cognitive errors he performs. Therefore, we present in this paper a new affordable activity recognition system, based on passive RFID technology, able to detect errors related to cognitive impairment in morning routines. The entire system relies on an innovative model of elliptical trilateration with several filters, and on an ingenious representation of activities with spatial zones. This system has been implemented and deployed in a real smart home prototype. We also present the promising results of a first experiment conducted on this new activity recognition system with real cases scenarios about morning routines.