Smart homes for the elderly dementia sufferers: identification and prediction of abnormal behaviour

In this paper we have described a solution for supporting independent living of the elderly by means of equipping their home with a simple sensor network to monitor their behaviour. Standard home automation sensors including movement sensors and door entry point sensors are used. By monitoring the sensor data, important information regarding any anomalous behaviour will be identified. Different ways of visualizing large sensor data sets and representing them in a format suitable for clustering the abnormalities are also investigated. In the latter part of this paper, recurrent neural networks are used to predict the future values of the activities for each sensor. The predicted values are used to inform the caregiver in case anomalous behaviour is predicted in the near future. Data collection, classification and prediction are investigated in real home environments with elderly occupants suffering from dementia.