Investigation of Low-Cost Wearable Internet of Things Enabled Technology for Physical Activity Recognition in the Elderly

Technological advances in mobile sensing technologies has produced new opportunities for the monitoring of the elderly in uncontrolled environments by researchers. Sensors have become smaller, cheaper and can be worn on the body, potentially creating a network of sensors. Smart phones are also more common in the average household and can also provide some behavioural analysis due to the built-in sensors. As a result of this, researchers are able to monitor behaviours in a more naturalistic setting, which can lead to more contextually meaningful data. For those suffering with a mental illness, non-invasive and continuous monitoring can be achieved. Applying sensors to real world environments can aid in improving the quality of life of an elderly person with a mental illness and monitor their condition through behavioural analysis. In order to achieve this, selected classifiers must be able to accurately detect when an activity has taken place. In this thesis we aim to provide a framework for the investigation of activity recognition in the elderly using low-cost wearable sensors, which has resulted in the following contributions: 1. Classification of eighteen activities which were broken down into three disparate categories typical in a home setting: dynamic, sedentary and transitional. These were detected using two Shimmer3 IMU devices that we have located on the participants’ wrist and waist to create a low-cost, contextually deployable solution for elderly care monitoring. 2. Through the categorisation of performed Extracted time-domain and frequency-domain features from the Shimmer devices accelerometer and gyroscope were used as inputs, we achieved a high accuracy classification from a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model applied to the data set gained from participants recruited to the study through Join Dementia Research. The model was evaluated by variable adjustments to the model, tracking changes in its performance. Performance statistics were generated by the model for comparison and evaluation. Our results indicate that a low epoch of 200 using the ReLu activation function can display a high accuracy of 86% on the wrist data set and 85% on the waist data set, using only two low-cost wearable devices

Experimental Analysis of Cost-Effective Mobile Sensing Technologies for Activity Analytics in Elderly Care

Advancements in sensor technology has provided new ways for researchers to monitor the elderly in uncontrolled environments. Sensors have become smaller, cheaper and can now be worn on the body. Smart phones are also more common in the average household and can provide some analysis of behaviour. Because of this, researchers are able to monitor behaviours in a more natural setting, which can produce useful data. For those suffering with a mental illness, this is important as it allows for continuous, non-invasive monitoring in order to diagnose symptoms from different behaviours. However, issues with the sensors and the involvement of human factors are challenges that need to be addressed. These challenges must be taken into consideration in addition to the behavioural symptoms of Dementia that can appear in the elderly. The application of sensor technologies can aid in improving the quality of life of an elderly person with Dementia and monitor the progression of the disease through behavioural analysis. This paper will provide an experiment protocol that can be used to monitor those with mild cognitive impairment in a natural environment. We will also provide data and results from an initial experiment and discuss our plans for future experimentation