Applicaton Of Technology To Help Old Aged People
Janie Smith is 89 years old African American who lives in a small two-story building in an inner city. She is a time-oriented person, who lives independently in her tiny two-story home. The living room is just big enough to keep her favorite recliner. In the room, there are several low-level shelves which are filled with pictures of her family, which she uses to relive the sweet memories that she had with her family. In the current scenario with help of technology we don’t need to save pictures in albums or frame, technology has improved to such extent that anything is possible by a single click or a command.
Therefore, I argue that technology can not only help old aged people to be mentally strong but can also help them to make their day to day life more manageable. Emotional health is an important part of overall health (Staff, 2017). Positivity that she could get by looking at those family pictures will help to strengthen her emotional health. Emotionally healthy people know how to handle their emotions or any negative feelings which can depress them. More than two million of 34 million Americans age 65 or older suffer from some form of depression (2015). If looking at pictures helps her to overcome her loneliness, the technology which is going to be discussed in this paper will her to great extent. Due to lack of space she is not able to place multiple photo frames and decided to keep them inside the lower-level shelves and being 85 years old it’s not easy for her access her lower shelves on daily basis. Technology that she could use could be Alexa Smart Mirror.
Firstly, the mirror can be used as a traditional mirror that essentially provides a sense of natural interaction with surrounding environment, Secondly, it provides an extendable framework for integrating smart appliances and services of Amazon Echo with the mirror interface in order to automate the home environment. The price may range from 300 dollars- 600 dollars. If Mrs. Smith cannot afford it, she can tell some of her relative in technical field to make it for her, as it is possible to build it at home in much cheaper rate. There are several products in the market like Google home, Alexa Echo, which is a small speaker that can relay information through sound. You can request music, news or weather. But neither of them can convey the information visually. Alexa Smart Mirror will be used to display useful information such as date, time, weather and daily reminders, and will also help to view pictures which you can store in Alexa device and will only occupy a space of the single frame. A reminder can play a vital role, it will remind her to take each of her medicines and will also display the pictures of her medicines, so she doesn’t get confused between the look-a-like medicines. Not taking medicines on time can also kill her, as she is 85 years old, she may forget which medicine to take and at what time. Getting updated about the weather will help her to take precautions which she can take to avoid the bad weather and be safe when she leaves home for shopping. One more great advantage of Alexa Smart Mirror is that it can be used to control devices like the fan, lights, ac, tv as giving the command “Alexa can you switch on/off the particular device”, and this is possible just by sitting at one place. Smart Mirror will have great potential for expansion. As an open platform, consumers and developers will be able to quickly build, adapt, and hack their smart Alexa Mirror to fit their out needs. This mirror will be a step-in future of IoT, connecting your daily mirror to Tech-world. In Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, many of the objects that surround us will be on the network in one form or another (Gubbi, 2013). There are different kinds of smart mirrors available in the market.
Some of them are:
- Microsoft Magic Mirror- With this mirror you can take a glance at things like the stock exchange, weather, time, and the travel time you can except on your morning commute- all while styling your hair and brushing your teeth (9). Microsoft proposed this mirror in 2016 which works on Windows 10 IOT core on Raspberry Pi 3. Its web app was made open to the GitHub repository so that anyone can build their mirror.
- Apple Smart Mirror- Web developer Rafael Dymek has created a smart mirror based on iOS 10. The smart mirror looks like a gigantic full-sized iPhone with Intuitive details like time, weather forecast widget and icons with full-fledged apps (10). Design includes time and date in the upper right-hand corner and weather in the top left. All apps can be moved around and placed anywhere on the mirror. After 45 seconds of inactivity, the mirror goes to sleep which appears like an ordinary mirror, just tap anywhere to wake back up and resume use.
- Ekko Smart Mirror-French firm Miliboo, a market leader in the manufacture and online distribution of furniture, unveiled its EKKO smart mirror at CES 2017. Boasting a 10-inch OLED display and it runs on Android 5. 0 Lollipop (11), EKKO is the first smart mirror available that combines simplicity and technology to transform your daily routine. The EKKO mirror is an attractive multimedia platform that reflects not only your physical appearance but your personality as well.
- Perseus Smart Mirror- This mirror operates on the separate platform on Raspberry Pi. It is equipped with the camera, speakers, and WI-FI and Bluetooth connectivity, the mirror runs on a 2GHz quad-core-processor (12). It is your choice which apps you want to keep and which you don’t want to. With help of Smart Mirror, you can play “how to …” videos. Learn and apply your knowledge at the same time. All the mirrors as mentioned above are recommendable, but it is difficult for a person belonging to the middle-class family to afford it. So the best way to use the smart mirror is building your own and with much more skill set.
For building our product, we will require Raspberry-pi 3 model b (Raspberry-pi can be used as the main board and sensors will collect all the real-time data from this environment and this real-time data fetched by the webserver and displayed. ), Mic in order to communicate with Alexa, USB Sound Card, 16GB MicroSD Card to store pictures, songs, and rest program for linking Alexa, any strong Glue to stick everything together, a picture frame which you can buy from any store or can also make it home if you have wood at home, Extension cord to connect everything together, Computer screen to display the image or any content you want to, Mirrored film so that you can use this frame as mirror too, USB speaker to listen what Alexa replies and a camera to monitor activities of aged people( so that in case of emergency, they can be tracked).
Step 5: Installing Skillset of Amazon Alexa Amazon made their voice assistant code open source and Cross-platform. That means without buying Amazon Echo, we could get home assistant you can just install it in the device you want to. Alexa Voice Service enables you to access cloud-based Alexa capabilities with support of AVS API’s, hardware kits, software tools, and documentation (Crist, 2017). Amazon Alexa simplifies building voice-forward devices for speech recognition and natural language understanding in the cloud. By default, Alexa can understand the English Language. But it can translate to other languages with it skill set.
Amazon skill kit is a collection of self-service API’S, tools, documentation, and code samples that makes it fast and easy for you to add skills to Alexa (2016). Alexa can do impressive number of things. It can stream Amazon music or Spotify, control your Philips Hue smart bulbs or anything connected to a SmartThings hub and integrate with IFTTT for a laundry list of other functions. According to the article by Crist in cnet. com states that there are around 10,00 Alexa skills are available now. One of the skills of Amazon skill that could also solve the issue that Mrs. Smith used to face that is due to mobility limitations in her home she could not visit grocery store, she could just command “Alexa can you order xyz product from zyx store”, and within a specific time limit particular product will be delivered in front of her house. And after that she doesn’t have to wait/depend on someone to get the grocery she wants, making her life more comfortable.
When a user speaks to a device with Alexa, the speech is being streamed to the Alexa service cloud. Alexa recognizes the speech, determines what the user wants and then sends a structured request to the particular skill that can fulfill the user’s request. Alexa handles all speech recognition and conversion in the cloud. Every Alexa skill has an interaction model which represents the way the users communicate with Alexa. For example,Mrs. Smith asks Alexa: “ Hi Alexa can switch on the lights”. Firstly Alexa gets activated by the word “Alexa”, then it collects more information from the user for better results. Alexa replies: “For which room”. The user provides the necessary information. Mrs. Smith: “Master Bedroom”Her request is being processed and the lights are switched on. Master bedroom is the words which user has previously configured and named. Alexa uses the pre-built interaction model for the smart home request to create a structural representation of request, called device directive. Alexa sends the device directive to the specific skill that can control the master bedroom lights device. This skill turns on the specified lights by communicating with the device cloud over the internet, then returns a response indicating whether it was successful.
For building a skill first create a developer console account: just to create a configuration for the skill, which collects information about the skill, like name, type of interaction model to use and other information. For Smart Home Skill you need the cloud-enabled device that you want to control like light, switch etc. The device must be controllable via a cloud-based service that you have access to. Then an account with Amazon web services, needed for Lambda function to host the skill code. You can choose the programming language that you are comfortable with like java, python, c++ or Node. js.
The diagram represents how the user communicates with Alexa and gets his/her work done. The AWS Lambda function in the diagram is the service offered by Amazon Web Services. One problem that Mrs. Smith could face is when Mrs. Smith leaves home for any purpose, whether for a short walk, or to meet someone, it may not be safe for her as crime rate is high in most of the areas and even if in situation like in situation she faces obstacles in her way, or she met with an accident, there must be a device o track her in case she gets late. The device must be designed in such a manner that it is not heavy to carry, and it can be attached to her body and is easy to carry. It could be a locket or any device like a watch or something that she could keep in her pocket or bag that she carries with her while traveling. According to research, 28% of all noninstitutionalized older person lived alone (13), like Mrs. Smith. The proposition of living alone increases with advanced age.
As the older population escalates, we can expect that elders will represent a larger population of crime victims. The older population can be the victim of drunk people or can be attacked for money. Due to their less physical strength, they may be able to defend themselves. In such situation, they can use this alert device they can press the alert button which will send the information to selected contacts, even if the person is not nearby to help he/she can dial 911 and give the location to the officer which is tracked by GPS attached to the device. There was an incident reported by CNN, it stated that a woman was charged with attempt to murder as she tried to hurt the old man of age 91 years Mexican old man with the brick.
The women were identified as Rodolfo Rodriguez and were arrested on July 4, 2018. He was hit by brick for just passing by her. Women started hitting him without any warnings, in that situation, it was difficult for that old man to take phone and dial for help, it was nearly impossible. Consider Mrs. Smith was facing the same problem, during that situation she could use the person alert device and inform the people in her contact or the police and could get immediate assistance. As specified earlier the Personal Alert system can be of different shapes which can be carried discreetly in a pocket or purse or worn with one or several accessory options like a pendant, wristband, or belt clip. This device has inbuilt GPS to enable tracking. If a press the device the message would go to the contact selected to be informed and if pressed twice it will direct send the alert message to police for help. It even has automatic fall detection that will send an alert if it detects a sudden fall that may have left user incapable of pressing the alert button. One in every 3 people over 70 years of age are estimated to fall 1 or more times each day. Fall can have severe consequences such as injury or death. Recovering from injuries takes a long time due to diseases old people may have and thus making their daily life more complicated.
In 2010 in the United States, 21,649 older adults died from fall-related injuries (15). Method to prevent falls includes regular exercise which will strengthen their physical strength, and take the necessary supplementation like for their bones, Vitamin D3 etc. Fall detection technologies enable rapid detection and intervention for individuals who have experienced fall. This could reduce physical and mental damage caused not only by the fall but a time after a fall before discovery. These technologies will help to reassure those at a risk of falling as well as their caregivers and family. This device compatible with Android and iOS devices. To activate the device press the button for 10 seconds which will activate the device and the red light starts blinking which means it is ready to pair with phone. It can link with your cell-phone using Bluetooth. Once connected you are ready to go. In case your device gets disconnected it will send the notification on your phone so that you can repair.
Conclusion
Being 89 years old she can live her life independently. If she adopts some of the latest technologies, her life could get much easier and safe. Technology cannot only make her mentally strong but will also give strength to face a different situation and people around her with confidence. 1. Staff, F. E. (2017, July 27). Mental Health: Keeping Your Emotional Health.
