Patent Grant
8138926
The present disclosure relates generally to the field of data processing, and more particularly to methods and related apparatus for monitoring and guiding human subjects interacting with objects.
Many people rely on medicine to help cope with ailments. For optimum efficacy, medications may need to be taken according to a specific schedule. For people who regularly take multiple different medications, it can be difficult to consistently follow the directions for all of the different medications. For instance, when a person or “subject” is supposed to take a variety of different pills at different times during the day, it may be difficult for that person to keep track of which pills need to be taken at a given time, which pills have already been taken, etc. Moreover, problems with perception (e.g., due to poor eyesight) or cognition (e.g., due to Alzheimer's disease) can substantially increase the likelihood that the subject will not properly follow the medication regimen.
In addition to tracking medication usage, it could also be useful to track many other types of activities or interaction, to provide more effective assisted living. For instance, it might be useful to track eating practices, movements within the house, etc. It could also be helpful to be able to track and distinguish activities and interactions of two or more people within the same household or living environment.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and readers may be used to monitor interaction between a person and an object. For instance, an RFID reader may be used to control a door lock, and a person can swipe a badge with an RFID tag near the RFID reader to unlock the door. However, since RFID readers detect proximity, they may be difficult to adapt for use in tracking medication usage. For instance, if a person were to select a pill bottle from a shelf with many other pill bottles, an RFID reader might have difficulty determining which particular pill bottle was chosen.
Features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the appended claims, the following detailed description of one or more example embodiments, and the corresponding figures, in which:
Processing system 20 may also include other hardware components, and the hardware components may be communicatively coupled via one or more system buses 14 or other communication pathways or mediums. This disclosure uses the term “bus” to refer to shared (e.g., multi-drop) communication pathways, as well as point-to-point pathways, interconnect rings, etc. In the embodiment of
Processing system 20 may be controlled, at least in part, by input from input devices such as a keyboard, a mouse, a remote control, etc., and/or by directives received from another machine, biometric feedback, or other input sources or signals. Processing system 20 may utilize one or more communication ports and one or more wired or wireless connections to communicate with one or more other data processing systems. Communication ports may also be referred to as input/output (I/O) ports, and they may be implemented as parallel ports, serial ports, universal serial bus (USB) controllers, high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) ports, network interface controllers (NICs), modems, etc.
In various embodiments, processing systems may be interconnected by way of a physical and/or logical network, such as a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), an intranet, the Internet, etc. Network communications may utilize various wired and/or wireless short range or long range carriers and protocols, including radio frequency (RF), satellite, microwave, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11, 802.15.4, 802.16, 802.20, Bluetooth, optical, infrared, cable, laser, etc. Protocols for 802.11 may also be referred to as wireless fidelity (WiFi) protocols. Protocols for 802.15.4 may also be referred to as wireless personal area network (WPAN) protocols. Protocols for 802.16 may also be referred to as WiMAX or wireless metropolitan area network protocols, and information concerning those protocols is currently available at grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/16/published.html.
The invention may be described herein with reference to data such as instructions, functions, procedures, data structures, application programs, configuration settings, etc. When the data is accessed by a machine, the machine may respond by performing tasks, defining abstract data types, establishing low-level hardware contexts, and/or performing other operations, as described in greater detail below. The data may be stored in volatile and/or non-volatile data storage. For purposes of this disclosure, the term “program” covers a broad range of software components and constructs, including applications, drivers, processes, routines, methods, modules, and subprograms. The term “program” can be used to refer to a complete compilation unit (i.e., a set of instructions that can be compiled independently), a collection of compilation units, or a portion of a compilation unit. The term “program” may also be used to refer to a set of one or more instructions resulting from processes such as translation, interpretation, compilation, linking, etc. Thus, the term “program” may be used to refer to any collection of instructions which, when executed by a processing system, performs a desired operation or operations.
In the embodiment of
In the embodiment of
In the embodiment of
In the embodiment of
Motion detecting device 50 may also include a motion detector 54, one or more output devices such as a display 52 and a speaker 53. Motion detecting device 50 may also include an I/O port 58 for communicating with activity monitoring station 20. I/O port 58 may include an antenna, a transceiver, and amplifier, and other components to support wireless communication. Motion detecting devices 60, 70, 80 may include the same or similar components.
In the example embodiment, motion detecting device 60 is part of a bracelet 62 to be worn by a human subject, and motion detecting device 50 is part of another bracelet to be born by a different human subject. For example, the human subjects may be an elderly couple, the husband may wear motion detecting device 50, and the wife may wear motion detecting device 60. The other motion detecting devices may be attached to various objects with which the human subjects may interact. For example, motion detecting device 80 may be attached to or reside in a medicine container 82, such as a pill bottle. Motion detecting device 70 may be associated with a different pill bottle, or with a different object, such as a safety device associated with a vehicle.
In one embodiment, low-cost long-term wearable sensing technologies are used to facilitate remote care services. The motion detectors may be implemented as small form factor accelerometers, gyroscope-based sensors, piezoelectric switches, mercury tilt switches, and/or other types of sensors. Such sensors may also be used on objects of interest. As described in greater detail below, activity monitoring station 20 may use motion data from these sensors to determine which person in a multi-person household performed a particular activity, such as taking medication on time, eating a meal, traveling in a vehicle, lifting weights, using other types of exercise equipment, etc. Activity monitoring station 20 may use mathematical correlation techniques to compare the motion of a tagged object with the motion of a person to determine whether the person is using the object. This analysis can take place in real time or after-the-fact.
For example, in the case of pill bottle to person correspondence, motion data representing detected three-dimensional motion of a sensor on the bottle can be compared, in a specific time window, with motion data representing detected three-dimensional motion of a sensor on the hand or wrist of the person to determine with high probability that a specific person has taken a specific pill. Such analysis can be extended to track multiple people choosing from multiple pill bottles.
In the case of a people mover, a similar one-to-one time correspondence with the sensor data on the mover and the person in a given timeslot can be used to determine whether the person is walking. In the case of a vehicle, motion detected from a car mounted sensor can be compared with motion from a sensor on a person to determine if the person was riding in that car.
In addition, motion detecting devices may be used to notify the wearer and/or daycare provider that an attempted interaction with an object is either an approved interaction or a disapproved interaction. For instance, a vehicle may be equipped with a safety device capable of preventing the vehicle from being started. That safety device may be movable, but tethered to the vehicle, like a breathalyzer, for instance. In other words, such a motion detector would not be rigidly attached to the main structure of the car, but would be movable, relative to the rest of the car. The human subject may be instructed to move the safety device before attempting to start the vehicle, and the safety device may prevent the vehicle from being started if the activity schedule indicates that operation of the vehicle by the human subject is not allowed at the present time. Alternatively, motion detectors connected to the driver's side car door or to a key ring may be used to determine that the subject is likely to try starting the car, and the car can be disabled if the schedule disapproves of the subject driving at the present time. Alternatively, the human subject may be allowed to start the vehicle, but activity monitoring station 20 may automatically transmit a message to a caregiver indicating that the human subject has started the vehicle at a disapproved time.
Alternatively, the motion detector associated with the car may be rigidly attached to the main structure of the car, and the activity monitoring station may simply correlate motion of the entire vehicle with motion of the subject. In such an implementation, the monitoring station may send a warning message to a caregiver in response to detecting that the subject is moving/riding in the vehicle at a disallowed time.
Block 210 depicts activity monitoring station 20 receiving one or more medication schedules pertaining to the elderly couple. For instance, activity monitoring station 20 may receive the schedule from remote processing system 90 or from a removable storage device. In one embodiment, activity monitoring station 20 receives one schedule listing the medications that the husband is scheduled to take and time parameters describing when each medication should be taken, and monitoring station 20 receives another schedule with the same kind of information for the wife.
In alternative embodiments, other types of schedules may be used. These schedules may be referred to as activity schedules or interaction schedules. For instance, activity monitoring station 20 may receive a schedule indicating times during which a particular human subject should be allowed to operate a vehicle, and times during which a subject should not be allowed to operate a vehicle. The schedule may also include similar types of information describing allowed and disallowed interactions with other objects. The schedule may also include recommended actions with recommended times for those actions. For instance, the schedule may describe a recommended diet program and/or a recommended medication schedule. As explained in greater detail below, activity monitoring station 20 may raise alerts and may prompt the subjects to perform scheduled activities, in response to detecting that a scheduled activity has not occurred.
As indicated at block 212, activity monitoring station 20 may then receive motion data from the various motion detecting devices. For instance, when the motion detecting devices are moved, the motion detecting devices may produce motion data for samples of that motion. The motion detecting devices made thus quantitize that motion.
For instance, each motion detecting device may derive and transmit a three-dimensional motion vector every “n” milliseconds. Such a motion vector may be referred to as a motion data item. Each motion data item may describe the direction of the displacement of the motion detecting device between two points during a fixed period of time. Each motion data item may also describe the magnitude of displacement. Motion detecting devices may also generate null vectors to indicate no motion. The motion detecting devices may automatically transmit the motion data to activity monitoring station 20. Activity monitoring station 20 may calibrate the motion data from the motion detecting devices to compensate for differences in sensitivity of different motion detecting devices, for different quantitization formulas used by different motion detecting devices, for different starting orientations of motion detecting devices, for a different magnitude of motion for an object compared to the motion of the person, or etc.
In one embodiment, the motion detecting devices are substantially time synchronized, so that similar motion paths can be compared within the same time window. However, the alignment algorithm may compensate for clock offset between two sensors, as long as the difference in time is substantially smaller than the time window used for comparing the two motion sequences.
As shown at block 214, after receiving motion data from the motion detecting devices, activity monitoring station may calculate alignment scores based on the received motion data. Motion data and alignment scores are described in greater detail below with regard to
In the embodiment of
1−(# of insertions+# of deletions+# of substitutions)/(# of symbols in sequence A)
Accordingly, monitoring program 40 may compute the alignment score for the two sets of vectors in
1−(1+1+1)/(10)=1−3/10=0.7
Monitoring program 40 may compute the alignment score over a window of time covering the last “m” vectors of each sequence.
Referring again to
Thus, activity monitoring station 20 may determine that two sets of vectors match if the corresponding vectors in both sets point roughly in the same direction. Exact equality is not necessary, since too long sequences of nearly identical vectors are unlikely to be detected unless the two objects in motion are following roughly the same path. In one embodiment, monitoring program 40 compares the relative angles of the motion vectors, rather than the absolute orientation of the motion vectors.
As shown at block 230, after determining that a particular person has interacted with a particular object, monitoring program 40 may determine whether such an interaction is an approved interaction or a disapproved interaction, based on the information in medication schedule 42, the present time, etc. If the interaction is approved, monitoring program 40 may simply record information pertaining to the interaction in the activity log 44, as depicted at block 236. However, if the interaction is disapproved, monitoring program 40 may trigger a warning, as shown at block 232.
Various different types of warnings may be triggered in different circumstances. For example, if monitoring program 40 detects that the husband is moving a pill bottle with medicine for the wife, monitoring program 40 may send a warning signal to the motion detecting device worn by the husband to cause that motion detecting device to generate a warning. For instance, monitoring program 40 may cause the motion detecting device to illuminate a red light. In other embodiments, other types of warning mechanism or techniques may be used, (e.g., audio/sound, vibration of an object, text or graphics displayed on a TV or computer screen, email or text messages sent to a caregiver, logging of data on a backend server for later viewing by a caregiver, etc.).
By contrast, if the interaction is approved, monitoring program 40 may trigger a confirmation message. For instance, monitoring program 40 may cause the motion detecting device worn by the husband to illuminate a green light in response to determining that the husband is moving a pill bottle for a pill the husband is scheduled to take. Alternatively, monitoring program 40 may use the motion detecting device on the object that is being moved to generate the warning message or confirmation message. In other embodiments, other types of confirmation mechanism or techniques may be used, (e.g., audio/sound, vibration of an object, text or graphics displayed on a TV or computer screen, email or text messages sent to a caregiver, logging of data on a backend server for later viewing by a caregiver, etc.).
As shown at block 234, in addition to triggering a warning, monitoring program 40 may take steps to prevent the human subject from performing a disapproved action. For instance, as described above, in response to determining that a person is attempting to use a vehicle a disapproved time, based on motion data from a motion detecting device on the person and a motion detecting safety device in the vehicle, monitoring program 40 may send a signal to the safety device to cause the safety device to prevent the vehicle from being started.
As indicated at block 236, data describing disapproved actions and the corresponding responses generated by monitoring program 40 may also be logged. For each detected interaction, activity log 44 may record the person and the object involved in the interaction, the time of the interaction, whether the interaction was approved or disapproved, and the response taken by monitoring program 40.
In addition, monitoring program 40 may send signals to motion detecting devices to prompt a human subject to conduct a scheduled interaction. For instance, if it is time for the husband to take a particular pill, monitoring program 40 may cause a green light to be displayed on the motion detecting device worn by the husband, while also causing a green light to be displayed on the motion detecting device associated with the appropriate pill bottle. Similarly, to assist in an exercise program in which the wife is scheduled to lift specified weights a specified number of times in a specified sequence, monitoring program 40 may cause a green light to be displayed on a motion detecting device on the first weight to be lifted, until the prescribed lifting regimen for that weight has been completed. At that time, monitoring program 40 may turn off the green light on the first weight, and turn on a green light on the second prescribed weight. Monitoring program 40 may use this kind of approach to guide subjects through complex exercise regimens. In addition, monitoring program 40 may automatically record data that accurately describes the exercises performed by multiple individuals. For instance, this data may list the different weights lifted by the wife, the number of lift repetitions in each set, the number of sets, the sequence of exercises, the time spent exercising, etc.
As indicated at block 242, monitoring program 40 may then determine whether a report has been requested. For instance, monitoring program 40 may receive a request for a report from a remote caregiver at remote processing system 90, or monitoring program 40 may automatically generate reports according to a predetermined schedule requesting reports. If the report has been requested, monitoring program 40 may generate that report, as shown at block 242. In one embodiment, a report is produced for each human subject wearing a motion detecting device. Such a report may indicate whether that subject has properly interacted with objects associated with motion detecting devices, according to the activity schedule or medication schedule 42. For example, the reports may indicate that the husband has taken all medication according to schedule, but the wife did not take a particular medication according to schedule. Thus, the reports may specify which medications were missed, when they were missed, which medications were taken improperly, etc. Monitoring program 40 may save and/or print the reports locally. Alternatively or in addition, monitoring program 40 transmit such reports to a caregiver at remote processing system 90.
Reports may also describe the exercise programs completed by the human subjects, including the information described above. Furthermore, a facility such as a health club may use techniques such as those described herein to track and report on exercise activities of multiple individuals interacting with multiple different objects. For example, dozens of people may be sharing the equipment in a health club at any one time, and the techniques described herein may be used to provide each person with a report describing the particular exercise regimen completed by that person.
As has been described, motion detecting devices may be used to monitor and guide human subjects interacting with objects. In light of the principles and example embodiments described and illustrated herein, it will be recognized that the illustrated embodiments can be modified in arrangement and detail without departing from such principles.
Also, the foregoing discussion has focused on particular embodiments, but other configurations are contemplated. In particular, even though expressions such as “in one embodiment,” “in another embodiment,” or the like are used herein, these phrases are meant to generally reference embodiment possibilities, and are not intended to limit the invention to particular embodiment configurations. As used herein, these terms may reference the same or different embodiments that are combinable into other embodiments.
Similarly, although example processes have been described with regard to particular operations performed in a particular sequence, numerous modifications could be applied to those processes to derive numerous alternative embodiments of the present invention. For example, alternative embodiments may include processes that use fewer than all of the disclosed operations, processes that use additional operations, processes that use the same operations in a different sequence, and processes in which the individual operations disclosed herein are combined, subdivided, or otherwise altered.
Alternative embodiments of the invention also include machine accessible media encoding instructions for performing the operations of the invention. Such embodiments may also be referred to as program products. Such machine accessible media may include, for example, storage media such as floppy disks, hard disks, CD-ROMs, ROM, and RAM; and other detectable arrangements of particles manufactured or formed by a machine or device. Instructions may also be used in a distributed environment, and may be stored locally and/or remotely for access by single or multi-processor machines.
It should also be understood that the hardware and software components depicted herein represent functional elements that are reasonably self-contained so that each can be designed, constructed, or updated substantially independently of the others. The control logic for providing the functionality described and illustrated herein may be implemented as hardware, software, or combinations of hardware and software in different embodiments. For instance, one or more modules, subsystems, etc., in one or more devices may be implemented as embedded controllers, using components such as programmable or non-programmable logic devices or arrays, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), embedded processors, smart cards, and the like.
As used herein, the terms “processing system” and “data processing system” are intended to broadly encompass a single machine, or a system of communicatively coupled machines or devices operating together. Example processing systems include, without limitation, distributed computing systems, supercomputers, high-performance computing systems, computing clusters, mainframe computers, mini-computers, client-server systems, personal computers, workstations, servers, portable computers, laptop computers, tablets, telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), handheld devices, entertainment devices such as audio and/or video devices, and other platforms or devices for processing or transmitting information.
In view of the wide variety of useful permutations that may be readily derived from the example embodiments described herein, this detailed description is intended to be illustrative only, and should not be taken as limiting the scope of the invention. What is claimed as the invention, therefore, is each implementation that comes within the scope and spirit of the following claims, and all equivalents to such implementations.
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| Number | Date | Country | |
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| 20090322533 A1 | Dec 2009 | US |
