Evaluating the behavior of mice and rats has substantially contributed to the progress of research in many scientific fields. Researchers commonly observe recorded video of animal behavior and manually record their observations for later analysis, but this approach has several limitations. The authors developed an automated system for tracking and analyzing the behavior of rodents that is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) in an ultra-high-frequency bandwidth. They provide an overview of the system's hardware and software components as well as describe their technique for surgically implanting passive RFID tags in mice. Finally, the authors present the findings of two validation studies to compare the accuracy of the RFID system versus commonly used approaches for evaluating the locomotor activity and object exploration of mice.
The ageing of population is a phenomenon that is affecting the majority of developed countries around the world and will soon affect developing economies too. In recent years, both industry and academia are focused on the development of several solutions aimed to guarantee a healthy and safe lifestyle to the elderly. In this context, the behavioral analysis of elderly people can help to prevent the occurrence of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and frailty problems. The innovative technologies enabling the Internet of Things (IoT) can be used in order to capture personal data for automatically recognizing changes in elderly people behavior in an unobtrusive, low-cost and low-power modality. This work aims to describe the ongoing activities within the City4Age project, funded by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission, mainly focused on the use of IoT technologies to develop an innovative AAL system able to capture personal data of elderly people in their home and city environments. The proposed architecture has been validated through a proof-of-concept focused mainly on localization issues, collection of ambient parameters, and user-environment interaction aspects.
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