Sensing from the basement: a feasibility study of unobtrusive and low-cost home activity recognition

The home deployment of sensor-based systems offers many opportunities, particularly in the area of using sensor-based systems to support aging in place by monitoring an elder's activities of daily living. But existing approaches to home activity recognition are typically expensive, difficult to install, or intrude into the living space. This paper considers the feasibility of a new approach that "reaches into the home" via the existing infrastructure. Specifically, we deploy a small number of low-cost sensors at critical locations in a home's water distribution infrastructure. Based on water usage patterns, we can then infer activities in the home. To examine the feasibility of this approach, we deployed real sensors into a real home for six weeks. Among other findings, we show that a model built on microphone-based sensors that are placed away from systematic noise sources can identify 100% of clothes washer usage, 95% of dishwasher usage, 94% of showers, 88% of toilet flushes, 73% of bathroom sink activity lasting ten seconds or longer, and 81% of kitchen sink activity lasting ten seconds or longer. While there are clear limits to what activities can be detected when analyzing water usage, our new approach represents a sweet spot in the tradeoff between what information is collected at what cost.