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| 2007.02.06 |
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Development of a remote monitoring system for the elderly: Tangible Remote Care
-- To share the atmosphere of life for families and single elderly in remote locations
NTT Comware Corporation (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President: Yuhji Imai; below, NTT Comware)
developed Tangible Remote Care as one of the Tangible Technology (*1) business applications to
provide a user-friendly monitoring system of the elderly in remote locations.
This is a remote monitoring system to automatically search people and recognize the state with the
tangible medias (Aube (*2) and Ambience Board (*3)) installed in the house of the elderly family
members.This system is also currently used by Network Service Systems Laboratories for Ubiquitous
service research.
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[Background]
With acceleration of demographic aging, the number of the single elderly, the aging communities
and the risk of being involved in some kind of crime for the elderly are increasing. Under these
circumstances, the social needs of monitoring or security systems to assist safe and secure life to
support seniors living along.
[Example of Tangible Remote Care System]
This system is to send various information of the single elderly detected by the sensors installed
in the room to the family in a remote location through Tangible Media. It provides various information
including the information ranging from presence and security of the elderly:"where is he/she" or
"taking too long to bath" etc. The system includes Aube and Ambience Board, to show the information
with change of color or location of the pointer respectively. For instance of the system using two (2)
units of Aube, the status of elderly is shown with colors (e.g. the location for blue: living room,
yellow: dining room, green: bathroom or the status for blue (normal), yellow (attention) and red (danger)).
This system helps the elderly and family members to share the atmosphere of living. It is easy
for the users to intuitively recognize the status of family with only seeing the Aube at home.
This is an intimate system for userfs lifestyle, which is good for eliminating the loneliness of
the elderly who live alone by sharing the atmosphere.
The system which employs sensor and intuitive interfaces such as light or sound, instead of camera,
also helps for both protection of privacy and usersf peace of mind without disturbing the individual lives.
The status is monitored with the sensors. For example, a reaction of the sensor in living room is
a sign of the status of the elderly to wake up, and the receiver in a remote location will hear a
certain sound of the status (e.g. music of little birds). The open/close sensor also monitors the
status of windows, which is a sign of the elderly going out or going to bed. If the sensor at the
window reacts after the person goes to bed, it is considered to be a sign of intrusion of
unidentified so that the system generates an alarm as well as triggering the sound or sending an
email to the family in a remote location for security.
Accordingly, this system minimizes the assistance of nursing attendants or security guard as the
family can monitor the elderly living alone. In aging communities, the elderly people may care
themselves each other.
[Major Features of Tangible Remote Care System]
This is an integrated system which employs one unit of Super-small Linux Server L-Box and various
media such as sensors to provide multiple functions including monitoring and security.
Optional programs are also available such as "anti-fire information for the kitchen"
and "physical condition monitoring by changes of frequency for the elderly to move in the house",
as well as "presence and security information for children to school using GPS mobile phone".
New media may be added for changes or extension of services.
The service developer may easily develop the remote services using various sensor information.
[Future Scenario]
NTT Comware aims to provide the service for nursing home business, elderly care facilities,
nursing services, local communities of aging, the elderly or child who live alone and the family.
[Terminology]
*1 Tangible Technology
Tangible means "substantial" and "perceptive". The next generation user interface proposed by
Professor Ishii of MIT Media Laboratory, to create a new interactive environment for computers
and human with a brand new operation systems. NTT Comware's collaboration with Professor Ishii
based on the basic concept of Tangible includes the network design tool (Tangible IP Network
Designer), the business process analysis tool (Tangible Business Process Analyzer), the tangible
simulator of tangible disasters and so on. Tangible User Interface includes the perceptive media
to use with a touch of hands or other human senses to make the digital information have
substantiality. Tangible Remote Care employs the perceptive media suitable to share the atmosphere
of living in remote locations.
*2 Aube
A globe-shaped tangible media to glow in the dark
*3 Ambience board
One of the tangible medias. This is to show conditions of a target area as the pointer moves on
illustrations and marks to identify locations and status (example: the location of a person is
indicated by the human-shaped pointer on the zone marks of living room, bathroom, dining, and
rest room).
* L-Box is the registered trademark of the NTT Comware Corporation.
* Other names of corporations and products are the registered trademark of each corporation.
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