Observation Model for Stand/Sitting Behavior Based on Use of Proximity Sensor

Abstract

Generally, elderly people tend to be in slow motion and suffer from delayed reaction time; moreover, few are familiar with mechanical or electronic controls. Their behavioral symptoms are caused by physical deterioration at both cognitive and sensory levels. Therefore, when designing and developing a standing-up and sitting-down assist device for the elderly, an easy-to-learn and simple-to-use interface system capable of responding to complex and diverse environments is of particular importance. Next, the device is expected to employ in various kinds of public places. More than anything, protection of personal information is one of its fundamental requirements. For this purpose, our paper tackles a problem of designing a user interface between an elderly user and the assist device for standing and sitting behaviors. As an essential functionality, the paper introduce a novel distance-based interface scheme, allowing to recognize these 3-D behaviors and generate the device’s motions corresponding to the recognized behaviors without requiring any additional user inputs.