Safety Confirmation in Restroom using Ultrasonic Sensors for Elders in Outlying Island

Abstract

The aging problem in Japan goes more and more serious. For lightening the burden of care workers in Japan, systems to confirm safety of elders in daily life attract a lot of attentions in recent years. In this research, a safety confirmation system for elders living in outlying island is designed. As a part in the system, a motion detection system using ultrasonic sensor is reported for safety confirmation of elders living in outlying island in Japan in this paper. Ultrasonic sensors are employed as observers for object detection and distance measurement in restroom for safety confirmation. According to privacy protection requirement in nursing, the ultrasonic sensors apply no image or video information are good for applications in daily care of elders. By employing the proposed method, motion of target person can be detected. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by experiments.