An Acoustic-Based Smart Home System for People Suffering from Dementia

Abstract

Aging-in-place can reduce the progress of dementia syndrome and improve the quality of life of the sufferers and their families. Taking into consideration the fact that numerous neurological research results suggest the use of sound as a stimulus for empowering the memory of the sufferer, an innovative information home support system for people suffering from dementia is proposed. The innovation of the proposed system is found in its application, that is to integrate a home system for assisting with person recognition via a sound-based memory aid service. Furthermore, the system addresses the needs of people suffering from dementia to recognize their familiars and have better interaction and collaboration, without the need for training. The system offers a ubiquitous recognition system, using smart devices like smart-phones or smart-wristbands. When a familiar person is detected in the house, then a sound is reproduced on the smart speakers, in order to stimulate the sufferer’s memory. The system identified all users and reproduced the appropriate sound in 100% of the cases. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first system of its kind for assisting person recognition via sound ever reported in the literature.

O uso de smart speakers na incapacidade: Uma scoping review

“…Os resultados da execução dos passos metodológicos descritos encontram-se resumidos em diagrama referente ao processo de seleção e motivos de exclusão (Figura 1). Após aplicação dos critérios, foram considerados elegíveis cinco artigos: (Boumpa et al, 2019;Ghazal et al, 2019;Hugo et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2020;Wallace & Morris, 2018).…”

“…Nenhum estudo incluiu especificamente outros modelos como HomePod, Invoke, Galaxy Home e Mi Smart Speaker. Apesar deste facto, dois estudos (Boumpa et al, 2019;Ghazal et al, 2019) utilizaram o SS como elemento de um sistema desenvolvido e, em ambos os casos, os autores não discriminaram um modelo concreto utilizado, circunstância que abre a possibilidade de que os dispositivos mencionados possam funcionar nos sistemas criados, desde que assegurada a capacidade de interagir com o smartphone do utilizador e aplicações ou sistemas de mapeamento desenvolvidas pelos investigadores. Smith et al, (2020) forneceram o Amazon Echo ou Google Home a cada um dos seus participantes com deficiência intelectual submetidos a intervenção.…”

Smart home technology solution for night-time wandering in persons with dementia

“…A couple of groups are moving the smart home systems from pure monitoring to monitoring with actions. Boumpa et al 10 propose a system that provides audio cues for a PWD to help them identify a familiar visitor, but the system has not been field tested. Finally, Radziszewski et al 11 describe a custom-assembled system that operates in two phases: two weeks of "analyzing" night-time behavior, followed by an "assistive phase" that is purported to decrease the stress associated with wandering.…”

“Computer, Test My Hearing”: Accurate Speech Audiometry with Smart Speakers

“…These speakers are connected to a speech assistant for hands-free control of the device. Functions such as music control, organization of daily schedules or voice-controlled home automation are well-established as features for smart speakers, and there is also interest in using them in the context of healthcare: For instance, a smart home system was introduced that provides acoustic cues to support dementia patients' memory [5] and related research proposed the use of smart speakers to support elderly people with their physical therapy [6]. The Apple ResearchKit [7] contains a speech-in-noise test that is similar to our approach, but has not been compared to a commercial test in a clinical setting to the best of our knowledge.…”