Affiliations: Department of Information Technology, University of Huelva, Carretera Palos de La Frontera s/n, 21819, Palos de la Frontera, Huelva, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] | Department of Electronics Technology, Technical University of Cartagena, Campus Muralla del Mar, s/n, 30202 Cartagena, Murcia, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] | Robotics, Vision and Control Group, University of Seville, Camino de los Descubrimientos, s/n, 41092 Seville, Spain. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] | ARCO Research Group, University of Extremadura, Escuela Politécnica. Campus Universitario s/n, 10003 Cáceres, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]
Note: [] Corresponding author.
Abstract: This paper describes a system for remotely monitoring elderly people in the context of ambient assisted living that consists of an inexpensive mobile robot, a commercial computer, a smart device running Android and a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). A software architecture based on distributed components allows to carry out remote surveillance, monitoring and telepresence tasks. Unlike other existing systems, the proposed one uses the mobile robot as key element, instead of using fixed devices such as cameras. This reduces the cost of the hardware, facilitates the installation procedure and allows to better ensure protection against interference with privacy, among other advantages. Furthermore, the robot also carries out telepresence tasks without needing to be teleoperated, since it uses a navigation module that allows it to build and store a topological map of an indoor environment, as well as safely and reactively navigate through it. The robot also allows the remote communication between the elderly person and the carer. Due to the distributed nature of the components, the proposed system can be easily extended with new features. Finally, with the purpose of validating both the hardware and software architectures, a set of experiments are presented together with a comparative study where relevant aspects such as economic cost, installation simplicity and performance are considered.
