Papers
Presence Stickers: A Seamlessly Integrated Smart Living System At A Solitary Elderly Home
Chor-Kheng Lim YuanZe University
In the field of Human Computer Interaction design, user interfaces that interact with natural human abilities such as gestures, touch or voice are often referred to as Natural User Interfaces (NUI). Touchless interfaces are even more critical in the era of COVID-19 (Iqbal and Campbell, 2020). It’s application in the medical field is also significant that in the operating room (OR), the non-contact interface is an ideal solution because it does not require any physical contact and can provide the necessary control functions in a clean and disinfected environment (O’Hara et al 2013, 2014). These specific functional conditions create a high demand for touchless interface design. In fact, this research hopes to explore how we should make better use of touchless interface of technology products in daily life, instead of just relying on existing input technology. This is because there is an intimate relationship between human body and space or objects. How to activate an existing space or objects detect the presence of human beings, even if there is no contact. The goal of this research is to design a smart living system that can be used by solitary elderly people through touchless interface design. Hope that the technology system can be seamlessly integrated into their homes and improve life assistance. This research develops “Presence Stickers” that can be easily pasted to the existing space elements (wall, floor) or home furniture. These 12*12cm “Presence Stickers” can actively sense people’s physical behaviors and body movements in space. The signals acquired from the Presence Stickers in spaces will then integrate to the APP system through the MQTT NBIoT technology. Users can define their own feedback through the APP system, such as switching home appliances, adjusting audio, electric fans, air-conditioning and other daily applications. This research first interviews the solitary elderly and observes the life patterns. Then analyze the different living patterns, especially the physical behavior, such as body movements in different spaces. This study selected four life patterns to arrange the placement of the Presence Stickers: 1. Entrance (going out and going home every day); 2. Kitchen (going out and returning to the kitchen); 3. Toilet (waking up to the toilet in the middle of the night); 4 Bedroom (reading before going to bed at night). For these physical behaviors and movements in spaces, we analyze the data change of distance and direction between body and objects. The sensing system in this study is made with low-cost posture sensing components, and the feedback settings can also be customized, which is suitable for the home life of different elderly. At the same time, more importantly, users can reach the smart living mechanism without changing any items in the home, so that the elderly can enjoy the convenience of technology-assisted life in the original familiar environment. At the same time, the data accessed by the App system can also be used as a record of the elderly’s life patterns, and can also be provided as a reference for smart medical treatment. Reference: Iqbal, M. Z., & Campbell, A. The emerging need for touchless interaction technologies. Interactions, 27(4), 51–52 (2020) O’Hara, K. et al. Touchless interaction in surgery. Communications of the ACM 57(1), 70–77 (2014). O‘Hara, K., Harper, R., Mentis, H., Sellen, A., Taylor, A.: On the Naturalness of Touchless: Putting the “ Interaction ” Back into NUI. ACM Trans. Comput. Interact. 20, 1–25 (2013)
Keywords: Touchless, Interaction Design, Body Movements, Nui, Sdg3 Good Health And Well-Being’