Emotive Sensors for Intelligent Care Systems: A Heuristic Discussion of Autonomic Wireless Sensing Systems

There is a growing need to facilitate at-home care through development of smart care spaces. Such systems require significant use of sensors, often potentially in very-low-power wireless nodes. In contrast to the logical and numerical nature of sensor data, care is emotional and hence symbolic in nature, and interfaces to care-systems need to respect the need to understand emotions and appropriately respond to them. Considering emotions and symbols from the ground up can help ensure that emotional intelligence is integrated throughout smart care-space development. Therefore, this paper provides a heuristic discussion around the potential for developing pseudo-emotions into low-power wireless sensor nodes, as an illustration of the concept.