Behaviour Pattern Based Safety Assistant for the Elderly

The business divisions Biomedical Engineering and Smart Systems of the Austrian Research Centers have been working since January 2006 on a research project called S.A.F.E.: Safety Assistant for the Elderly, with the goal to come up with an innovative solution to support independent living, safety and the high-quality provision of care for elderly. Core of the project is a wireless intelligent sensor network which detects the activities and movements of a person in an apartment environment and a behavior pattern recognition component which is able to automitically detect deviations from normal behaviour and to deliver an alarm to the user or to caregivers. The combination of a self-learning and state machine based approach is described and first results from the trial sites are presented.