Twinkle megane: Near-eye LED indicators on glasses in tele-guidance for elderly

The development of wearable technologies has generated significant interest in the last decades. Considering global social issues such as aged society besides the technologies, senior citizens suffering from memory loss would be one of potential user groups. Since the use of eyeglasses among the elderly is quite common, we have constructed a navigation interface on eyeglasses by implanting a set of light emitting diode indicators on the frame of the glasses. We aim to realize eyeglasses-based navigation system that provides the elderly with the visual cues and could be interpreted intuitively as navigational commands. Furthermore, we believe that our system would improve the independent mobility of the elderly. This paper explains our first prototype glasses with near-eye LED indicators, incremental experimentation, and the preliminary results that are used to optimize the visual cues for real navigational tasks. The system was evaluated in simulated navigational tasks by the elderly participants suffering from dementia. We assessed our system by he experimentation and living lab methodology with data-driven approach.

[1]  Goshiro Yamamoto,et al.  Attention Control and Eyesight Focus for Senior Citizens , 2014, HCI.

[2]  Niels Henze,et al.  Wearable computing for older adults: initial insights into head-mounted display usage , 2014, UbiComp Adjunct.

[3]       .  Global prevalence of dementia: a Delphi consensus study , 2006 .

[4]  Goshiro Yamamoto,et al.  Conceptual design and implementation of Indicator-based Smart Glasses: A navigational device for remote assistance of senior citizens suffering from memory loss , 2015, 2015 9th International Symposium on Medical Information and Communication Technology (ISMICT).

[5]  G. Hubbard,et al.  Including older people with dementia in research: Challenges and strategies , 2003, Aging & mental health.

[6]  Mari Ervasti,et al.  European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) Summer 10-6-2011 WAYFINDING AID FOR THE ELDERLY WITH MEMORY DISTURBANCES , 2017 .

[7]  Alan R. Hevner,et al.  Design Research in Information Systems , 2010 .

[8]  Alan R. Hevner,et al.  Design Research in Information Systems: Theory and Practice , 2010 .

[9]  J. Forlizzi,et al.  Intelligent assistive technology applications to dementia care: current capabilities, limitations, and future challenges. , 2009, The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry.

[10]  Brian Jones,et al.  Sympathetic devices: designing technologies for older adults , 2013, SIGDOC '13.

[11]  Sungmee Park,et al.  Enhancing the quality of life through wearable technology , 2003, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine.

[12]  Jay G. Wilpon,et al.  A study of speech recognition for children and the elderly , 1996, 1996 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing Conference Proceedings.

[13]  S. Manel,et al.  Evaluating presence-absence models in ecology: the need to account for prevalence , 2001 .

[14]  S. Folstein,et al.  "Mini-mental state". A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. , 1975, Journal of psychiatric research.

[15]  Joan Murphy,et al.  Communication and dementia: how talking mats can help people with dementia to express themselves , 2007 .

[16]  Bruce H. Thomas,et al.  A wearable computer system with augmented reality to support terrestrial navigation , 1998, Digest of Papers. Second International Symposium on Wearable Computers (Cat. No.98EX215).

[17]  Simon J Graham,et al.  Age and dementia related differences in spatial navigation within an immersive virtual environment. , 2009, Medical science monitor : international medical journal of experimental and clinical research.