Short-Range Tracking Using Smart Clothing Sensors : A case study of using low power wireless sensors for pateints tracking in a nursing home setting

Nursing homes accommodate a high concentration of elderly patients often with cognitive or mobility impairments. Managing the evacuation process of a nursing home can be particularly challenging in the event of a natural disaster. This paper presents a case study involving interdisciplinary research in machine intelligence and communications on the use of active low-power transceivers embedded in smart clothing for the dynamic tracking management of patients through mobile access points. The process starts with intelligent event detection, which blends multiple data types from disparate sources as input signals to a near-real-time (NRT) event detection machine (EDM). The NRT EDM is a flexible framework that incorporates a plug-in classifier that can be trained to recognize unusual events, such as outbreak of fire. Preliminary evaluation tests have been conducted to validate the efficacy of the prototype system with encouraging results recorded.