Confidence: Ubiquitous Care System to Support Independent Living

The Confidence system aims at helping the elderly stay independent longer by detecting falls and unusual movement which may indicate a health problem. The system uses location sensors and wearable tags to determine the coordinates of the user's body parts, and an accelerometer to detect fall impact and movement. Machine learning is combined with domain knowledge in the form of rules to recognize the user's activity. The fall detection employs a similar combination of machine learning and domain knowledge. It was tested on five atypical falls and events that can be easily mistaken for a fall. We show in the paper and demo that neither sensor type can correctly recognize all of these events on its own, but the combination of both sensor types yields highly accurate fall detection. In addition, the detection of unusual movement can observe both the user's micro-movement and macro-movement. This makes it possible for the Confidence system to detect most types of threats to the user's health and well-being manifesting in his/her movement.