Sensorized environment for self-communication based on observation of daily human behavior

This paper describes an intelligent environmental system, SELF (Sensorized Environment for Life), that enables a person to maintain his or her health through "self-communication." The system externalizes a "self" by storing personal data such as physiological status, analyzing it, and reporting useful information to assist the person, in maintaining his or her health. To establish the methodology to create such a system, this study analyzes and re-defines the self as an object of information processing. Self-communication is nothing but understanding ourselves objectively. It is not easy to put into practice because it requires a visualized or numerized representation of oneself. As an example of an externalized self, this study focused on the physiological status of a person. The physiological status is obtained as follows: SELF observes the person's behavior with distributed sensors invisibly embedded in the daily environment, extracts physiological parameters from it, analyzes the parameters, and accumulates the results. The accumulated results are used for reporting useful information to maintain the person's health. The authors constructed a model room for SELF consisting of a bed with pressure sensor array, a ceiling lighting dome with a microphone, and a washstand with a display. Fundamental results of self-externalization using SELF are presented.