Paper Reading #5: Creating Salient Summaries of Home Activity Lifelog Data

Comments:



Reference Information:

Title: Creating Salient Summaries of Home Activity Lifelog Data
Author: Matthew L. Lee
Presentation Venue: CHI EA '10 Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems

Summary:

The researchers are studying the way in which it may be possible to create embedded systems that would be able to monitor the activities of elderly individuals who do not live in a managed care environment. The purpose of the system is to make an effort to ensure that the safety and well-being of the elderly individuals in question is maintained such that they can live a full life outside the realm of managed care facilities.

The researchers have gone through a process of requirement gathering in which they observed and interviewed elderly individuals on their daily routines and what their perceptions of their needs are. From this initial data, the researchers are building embedded sensor devices that can attempt to provide the functionality that would fit the needs of their initial findings. The ultimate goal they have for the project is to design an improved, comprehensive home monitoring system for elderly people.

Discussion:

This is a topic that hits home for me. My grandmother on my father's side ended up passing away a couple of years ago. She was found in her home on the floor. If these devices had been employed in her house, there might be a possibility that she would still be here with us today. Further, my wife's grandma is also in a similar situation. Currently, she has a care giver that comes out and helps her out a few times a week. It would be nice and give us peace of mind if we could have some of these systems in place to help monitor the state of her health and well-being.

Additionally, all of us are eventually going to grow old and have to face the prospects of facing these similar dilemmas ourselves. Unless researchers like Aubrey de Grey and others are able to figure out how to stop and/or reverse the aging process. We won't know what our future lives will be like if this becomes possible. But until then, I think that having a smart house with systems that can keep us going is nothing but a good thing. Who knows? Maybe Ray Kurzweil will get to live forever and not have to deal with these kinds of systems.