Exploiting Passive RFID Technology for Activity Recognition in Smart Homes

The number of seniors and other people needing daily assistance continues to increase, but the current human resources available to achieve this in the coming years will certainly be insufficient. To remedy this situation, smart habitats have emerged as an innovative avenue for supporting needs of daily assistance. Smart homes aim to provide cognitive assistance in decision making by giving hints, suggestions, and reminders, with different kinds of effectors, to residents. To implement such technology, the first challenge to overcome is the recognition of ongoing activity. Some researchers have proposed solutions based on binary sensors or cameras, but these types of approaches infringed on residents' privacy. A new affordable activity-recognition system based on passive RFID technology can detect errors related to cognitive impairment. The entire system relies on an innovative model of elliptical trilateration with several filters, as well as on an ingenious representation of activities with spatial zones. The authors have deployed the system in a real smart-home prototype; this article renders the results of a complete set of experiments conducted on this new activity-recognition system with real scenarios.