A support system for context awareness in a group home using sound cues

In a group home, caregivers should be aware of the inhabitant's real-time situation. The aim of our study is to facilitate the awareness of an inhabitant's situation by means of enhanced sound cues.

We propose an audio notification system that indicates the real-time situation of persons in a group home environment using sound cues instead of visual surveillance. The notification system comprises a prediction and a notification function. The prediction function estimates a person's real-time situation using a Bayesian network and sensed information; the notification function informs recipients of the predicted situation and the confidence level of the prediction by means of sound cues. We use natural sounds as sound cues.

As a first step to examine our system in a group home, we conducted operation and performance tests of each unit under a simple test environment. The correct prediction of the subject's situation is approximately 90%; further, it is shown that the sound cues should be selected according to their environmental dependence.

The results show that the method is useful for monitoring persons. As future study, we will conduct a field test on an implemented system and improve it for practical use in a group home.