Project
NOAH
Using the Internet Of Things to support the elderly in their independence at home
What
NOAH stands for “NOt Alone at Home” and aims to support the self-sufficiency of older adults.
The NOAH system uses an “Internet of Things” approach, with special home sensors suitable for capturing expressive features of daily living activities in a non-intrusive manner.
- “Internet of Things” stands for the set of smart devices that communicate with each other and exchange data via the Internet.
- “Non-intrusive research” here means that there was no far-reaching intervention in the residential environment.
Specific attention is paid to usability, with an emphasis on ease of use and low cost. Sensors are connected directly to the home Wi-Fi network, eliminating the need for dedicated sensor networks and aggregator nodes.
On the back end, a commercial cloud infrastructure is used to collect data, allowing for scalability and low installation costs at home. In the cloud, machine learning techniques are used to transform the raw data constantly coming from the sensors into meaningful information: trends, anomalies, alerts.
The system is inherently adaptive and does not operate with predefined thresholds or bandwidths. By taking a user-centric approach, specific apps are designed for the end-user and caregivers. A control dashboard is made available to healthcare systems to enable the integration of NOAH services into current healthcare practices.
Goal
The goal is to develop innovative techniques for continuous monitoring, based on home sensors and on advanced data analysis techniques.
By monitoring behavioral characteristics in daily living activities, specific activity profiles are drawn up for each user. Changes (abrupt or slow), possibly related to health or well-being problems, can thus be detected fully automatically. This eliminates the need for the caregiver to interpret the sensor data.
Differentiated feedback is given to the end user, the caregiver and the care system.
Relevance
Through technology (sensors, Internet of Things, Machine Learning,…) we gain insight into how older people behave and enable them to self-manage their daily activities.
Our role
Mobilab & Care acted as research partner for technology development for monitoring assisted living and testing the sensors and data communication in the Mobilab & Care Experience lab and in the Belgian pilot phase. The Experience Lab is a simulation environment for assisted living. We worked there on the testing and release of the sensors and data path.
Mobilab & Care was involved in both the technical design phases (with a particular focus on interdisciplinary research in behavioral analysis) and the validation and operation phases.
LiCalab was asked to provide methodological support regarding the interaction with end users in the different research phases and the management of the Belgian pilot site.
Publications
Document type
Title
Author
Date
Category
Link
The NOAH project: Internet of Things supporting seniors' independent living
Researchers
Researcher
Glen Debard
Researcher committed to introducing technology in (mental) health care for young and old.
Partners
- University of Parma (Italie., projectco-ordinator)
- AICOD s.r.l. (Italie)
- PROGES s.c.a.r.l. (Italie)
- Transilvania University of Brasov (Roemenie)
- VISION SYSTEM s.r.l.(Roemenie)
- University of Applied Sciences FH Joanneum (Oostenrijk)
- Artz und Labor EDV A. Günzberg GmbH (Oostenrijk)
Related research lines