A Smart LED Cane to Monitor Older People Living Alone for Considering Privacy

In recent years, the number of older people living alone has increased in Japan. Older people living alone may suddenly require urgent medical attention or treatment. However, some people in this population may not be able to monitor their physical condition; naturally, some abnormalities can only be observed by others. A wide variety of monitoring systems have been developed. This study considers cases in which older people living alone may experience a medical emergency and require urgent care. We propose a method in which an accelerometer is attached to a cane to collect behavioral data and display it with LED indicators. To avoid privacy violations, the LED display is read by a camera positioned so as not to be visible to people other than the user. We developed an implementation of the cane and confirmed the issues involved in the experiment. Research on this project is ongoing at present.