A light-weight system for detecting indoor wandering of demented elders living alone

Weichao Zhao, Xingshe Zhou, Hongbo Ni, Qiang Lin

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Wandering can be seen as one of the most frequent and dangerous behaviors of the elderly with dementia, bringing negative effects on their physical and mental health and heavy caring burden on stakeholders. In order to detect the indoor wandering of demented elders living alone in real time, this paper proposes a light-weight wandering detection system named LWDS. Specifically, the LWDS system first collects the location information with timestamp using a pair of pyroelectric infrared sensors mounted on the doors of each room, and then classifies the ongoing trajectory consisting of a series of locations into different wandering locomotion patterns according to an established wandering model. After a trajectory has been detected as containing wandering behavior, the developed system will send an alert to their carers for necessary treatment. The non-intrusive and easy-to-deploy properties ensure the proposed LWDS system can find wandering behaviors in a cost-effective and energy-efficient manner around the clock. An experimental evaluation conducted on a group of real data collected from two elders showed that the LWDS is effective in detecting indoor wandering when they moved across different rooms and obtained a detection ratio of more than 90.03% for the wandering patterns.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIEEE International Conference on Orange Technologies, ICOT 2014
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages53-56
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781479962846
DOIs
StatePublished - 12 Nov 2014
Event2014 IEEE International Conference on Orange Technologies, ICOT 2014 - Xi'an, China
Duration: 20 Sep 201423 Sep 2014

Publication series

NameIEEE International Conference on Orange Technologies, ICOT 2014

Conference

Conference2014 IEEE International Conference on Orange Technologies, ICOT 2014
Country/TerritoryChina
CityXi'an
Period20/09/1423/09/14

Keywords

  • elders with dementia
  • non-intrusive
  • pyroelectric infrared sensor
  • Wandering detection

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A light-weight system for detecting indoor wandering of demented elders living alone'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this