An Assistive Technology Solution for User Activity Monitoring Exploiting Passive RFID
Population ageing is having a direct influence on serious health issues, including hampered mobility and physical decline. Good habits in performing physical activities, in addition to eating and drinking, are essential to improve the life quality of the elderly population. Technological solutions,...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2020-09-01
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| Series: | Sensors |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/17/4954 |
| _version_ | 1797554864332472320 |
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| author | Bruno Ando Salvatore Baglio Salvatore Castorina Ruben Crispino Vincenzo Marletta |
| author_facet | Bruno Ando Salvatore Baglio Salvatore Castorina Ruben Crispino Vincenzo Marletta |
| author_sort | Bruno Ando |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Population ageing is having a direct influence on serious health issues, including hampered mobility and physical decline. Good habits in performing physical activities, in addition to eating and drinking, are essential to improve the life quality of the elderly population. Technological solutions, aiming at increasing awareness or providing reminders to eat/drink regularly, can have a significant impact in this scenario. These solutions enable the possibility to constantly monitor deviations from users’ normal behavior, thus allowing reminders to be provided to users/caregivers. In this context, this paper presents a radio-frequency identification (RFID) system to monitor user’s habits, such as the use of food, beverages, and/or drugs. The device was optimized to fulfill specifications imposed by the addressed application. The approach could be extended for the monitoring of home appliances, environment exploitation, and activity rate. Advantages of the approach compared to other solutions, e.g., based on cameras, are related to the low level of invasiveness and flexibility of the adopted technology. A major contribution of this paper is related to the wide investigation of system behavior, which is aimed to define the optimal working conditions of the system, with regards to the power budget, user (antenna)-tag reading range, and the optimal inter-tag distance. To investigate the performance of the system in tag detection, experiments were performed in a scenario replicating a home environment. To achieve this aim, specificity and sensitivity indexes were computed to provide an objective evaluation of the system performance. For the case considered, if proper conditions are meet, a specificity value of 0.9 and a sensitivity value of 1 were estimated. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T16:39:06Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-c160fd5970fc4321a8c52e83da9b92ff |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1424-8220 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T16:39:06Z |
| publishDate | 2020-09-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Sensors |
| spelling | doaj.art-c160fd5970fc4321a8c52e83da9b92ff2023-11-20T12:13:00ZengMDPI AGSensors1424-82202020-09-012017495410.3390/s20174954An Assistive Technology Solution for User Activity Monitoring Exploiting Passive RFIDBruno Ando0Salvatore Baglio1Salvatore Castorina2Ruben Crispino3Vincenzo Marletta4Department of Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica ed Informatica, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, ItalyDepartment of Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica ed Informatica, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, ItalyDepartment of Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica ed Informatica, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, ItalyDepartment of Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica ed Informatica, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, ItalyDepartment of Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica ed Informatica, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, ItalyPopulation ageing is having a direct influence on serious health issues, including hampered mobility and physical decline. Good habits in performing physical activities, in addition to eating and drinking, are essential to improve the life quality of the elderly population. Technological solutions, aiming at increasing awareness or providing reminders to eat/drink regularly, can have a significant impact in this scenario. These solutions enable the possibility to constantly monitor deviations from users’ normal behavior, thus allowing reminders to be provided to users/caregivers. In this context, this paper presents a radio-frequency identification (RFID) system to monitor user’s habits, such as the use of food, beverages, and/or drugs. The device was optimized to fulfill specifications imposed by the addressed application. The approach could be extended for the monitoring of home appliances, environment exploitation, and activity rate. Advantages of the approach compared to other solutions, e.g., based on cameras, are related to the low level of invasiveness and flexibility of the adopted technology. A major contribution of this paper is related to the wide investigation of system behavior, which is aimed to define the optimal working conditions of the system, with regards to the power budget, user (antenna)-tag reading range, and the optimal inter-tag distance. To investigate the performance of the system in tag detection, experiments were performed in a scenario replicating a home environment. To achieve this aim, specificity and sensitivity indexes were computed to provide an objective evaluation of the system performance. For the case considered, if proper conditions are meet, a specificity value of 0.9 and a sensitivity value of 1 were estimated.https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/17/4954assistive technologyuser habits monitoringRFIDsystem characterization |
| spellingShingle | Bruno Ando Salvatore Baglio Salvatore Castorina Ruben Crispino Vincenzo Marletta An Assistive Technology Solution for User Activity Monitoring Exploiting Passive RFID Sensors assistive technology user habits monitoring RFID system characterization |
| title | An Assistive Technology Solution for User Activity Monitoring Exploiting Passive RFID |
| title_full | An Assistive Technology Solution for User Activity Monitoring Exploiting Passive RFID |
| title_fullStr | An Assistive Technology Solution for User Activity Monitoring Exploiting Passive RFID |
| title_full_unstemmed | An Assistive Technology Solution for User Activity Monitoring Exploiting Passive RFID |
| title_short | An Assistive Technology Solution for User Activity Monitoring Exploiting Passive RFID |
| title_sort | assistive technology solution for user activity monitoring exploiting passive rfid |
| topic | assistive technology user habits monitoring RFID system characterization |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/17/4954 |
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