SHB: Small: Enabling Technologies for Assessing and Assisting Independent Living

这项研究探索了一种无线家庭定位监控系统的开发，用于评估和帮助老年人独立生活，到2040年，仅美国的人口人口就将超过8000万。居家位置跟踪技术在帮助评估和保持独立性方面表现出特别重要的潜力的关键领域包括药物管理、运动变化(例如行走速度变化)和跌倒检测。研究表明，高分辨率的定位信息是准确描述这些活动的关键。现有的定位系统缺乏多人跟踪能力，可靠性差，空间和时间分辨率有限，外形尺寸大，老年人佩戴不便，研究人员致力于开发一种健壮、高精度的三维无线定位系统，以同时跟踪多个患者的位置/运动和活动。具体地说，他们开发了超低功率、微型发射器，供老年人佩戴，并解决了几个尚未解决的技术挑战，如分布式接收器的无线同步和由于多路径重叠而导致的定位误差。创建了利用系统获取的位置数据来有效表征服药的推理算法。为了在独立的生活环境中验证推理模型的准确性，该系统被部署在受控智能家居环境和ORCATECH Living Lab社区老年人的家中。虽然由于项目范围/可行性的原因，重点放在药物管理上，但创建的核心技术将能够表征各种行为，包括已知可以预测患者神经退行性疾病的运动变化，如阿尔茨海默氏症和帕金森氏症。

This research explores the development of a wireless in-home location monitoring system for assessing and assisting independent living of the elderly, whose population demographics in the U.S. alone will exceed 80 million by 2040. Key areas where in-home location-tracking technologies exhibit particularly significant potential for helping assess and maintain independence include medication management, motor changes (e.g. walking speed changes), and fall detection. Research has revealed that high-resolution localization information is key to precisely characterizing these activities. Existing localization systems are inadequate for this purpose due to their lack of multi-person tracking capability, poor reliability, limited resolution in space and time, and large form factors that make them uncomfortable for seniors to wear.The investigators focus on developing a robust, high-precision, 3-dimensional wireless localization system to simultaneously track multiple patients' position/movement and activities. Specifically, they develop ultra-low power, tiny transmitters that are unobtrusive for seniors to wear, and address several unsolved technical challenges such as wireless synchronization of distributed receivers and localization error due to multipath overlap. Inference algorithms utilizing the location data acquired by the system to effectively characterize medication taking are created. To validate the accuracy of the inference models within independent living settings, the system is deployed in both a controlled smart home environment and in the homes of the ORCATECH Living Lab community-dwelling seniors. While the focus is on medication management due to project scope/feasibility, the core technology created will enable characterization of various behaviors, including motor changes that are known to be predictive of patients' neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.