A service robot for monitoring elderly people in the context of Ambient Assisted Living

作者：Pavon Pulido Nieves^*; Antonio Lopez Riquelme Juan; Ferruz Melero Joaquin; Angel Vega Rodriguez Miguel; Jose Barrios Leon Antonio

来源：Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, 2014, 6(6): 595-621.

DOI：10.3233/AIS-140284

• Service robots
• topological mapping
• autonomous navigation
• ambient assisted living
• elderly people
• pervasive computing
• middleware
• WSN

This paper describes a system for remotely monitoring elderly people in the context of ambient assisted living that consists of an inexpensive mobile robot, a commercial computer, a smart device running Android and a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). A software architecture based on distributed components allows to carry out remote surveillance, monitoring and telepresence tasks. Unlike other existing systems, the proposed one uses the mobile robot as key element, instead of using fixed devices such as cameras. This reduces the cost of the hardware, facilitates the installation procedure and allows to better ensure protection against interference with privacy, among other advantages. Furthermore, the robot also carries out telepresence tasks without needing to be teleoperated, since it uses a navigation module that allows it to build and store a topological map of an indoor environment, as well as safely and reactively navigate through it. The robot also allows the remote communication between the elderly person and the carer. Due to the distributed nature of the components, the proposed system can be easily extended with new features. Finally, with the purpose of validating both the hardware and software architectures, a set of experiments are presented together with a comparative study where relevant aspects such as economic cost, installation simplicity and performance are considered.

• 出版日期2014