Future Care Floor: A Sensitive Floor for Movement Monitoring and Fall Detection in Home Environments

This paper describes the conceptualization and realization of a sensor floor, which can be integrated in home environments to assist old and frail persons living independently at home. Its purpose is to monitor the inhabitant’s position within a room, to detect (abnormal) behavioral patterns as well as to activate rescue procedures in case of fall or other emergency events. This floor is part of a living lab (“The Future Care Lab”) developed and built within the eHealth project at RWTH Aachen University. The lab, which is part of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), serves as a test environment for user centered design of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies.