Looking in on the folks

BRIEFINGS

Now even the family portrait has gone digital. Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have devised a picture frame that can help people keep tabs on elderly loved ones.

Here's how it works. Sensors hooked to a PC are placed around the house to be monitored, and the data they pick up are sent via the Internet to the digital family portrait-which presumably is hanging in the house of a relative, friend, or caregiver. So far, the Georgia Tech folks have focused on measuring activity in the kitchen, movements from room to room, and in bed. (For example, how long have they been in bed, are they sleeping well or restlessly?) The elderly people involved can decide what they want monitored so that the system doesn't become too intrusive.

Icons on a flat-panel display mounted on the wooden frame indicate daily how much activity is taking place. "We are adding a second interface that updates on an hourly basis-when you touch the picture, you get a more detailed display. It resets after a few minutes," explains Elizabeth D. Mynatt, of Georgia Tech's College of Computing.

It is not an alarm system. It won't alert anyone that someone has fallen, for example. But it may be a good way to see how someone is recuperating after a fall or illness, Mynatt says.

The school has no plans of its own to take the system to market, "But we're open to working with companies who are interested in commercializing the portrait," Mynatt says.

Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Mar 2001
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