System of Monitoring a Person in a Living Space

• US 20170162022A1
• Filed: 07/30/2015
• Published: 06/08/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 08/06/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dutch Domotics B.V.
• Original Assignee: Dutch Domotics B.V.
• Inventors: Karkowski, Ireneusz Piotr
• Granted Patent: US 9,928,716 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 21/0415 detecting absence of activity per se
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 21/0423 detecting deviation from an expected pattern of behaviour or schedule

Abstract

A system for monitoring a lifestyle of a person in a living space includes sensors for detecting a presence of the person and/or an activity of the person, and a processor controlled system, coupled to the sensors for deriving events caused by the person and times when the events occur, for detecting event free periods of first lengths in which no events of a predetermined group occur, and for deriving, an estimate of in-bed time on the basis of the event free period of at least the first length detected in a first observation period beginning before a usual in-bed time, and for determining an estimate of the out-bed time on the basis of the events, and event free periods of at least a second length, detected in a second observation period ending after an usual out-bed time

Claims

1. System for monitoring a lifestyle of a person in a living space, comprising:

sensors located in the living space for detecting at least one of a presence of the person and an activity of the person, and

a processor comprising;

a device coupled to the sensors for deriving events caused by the person and times when the events occur,

a device for detecting event free periods of first lengths in which no events of a predetermined group occur, and

a device for deriving an estimate of in-bed time on the basis of a beginning of the event free period of at least the first length detected in a first observation period beginning before a usual in-bed time, whereby the estimate of the in-bed time is determined by said beginning and is indicative for an actual time that the person has gone to bed, and whereby the usual in-bed time is representative for a time that the person usually goes to bed.

2. System as claimed in claim 1, wherein the processor includes a device for deriving an estimate of the out-bed time on the basis of the events, and event free periods of at least a second length, detected in a second observation period ending after an usual out-bed time, which estimate of the out-bed time is indicative for the actual time that the person has come out of bed, and the usual out-bed time is representative for a time that the person usually comes out of bed.

3. System as claimed in claim 2,

wherein the processor generates and stores activities of a type asleep and corresponding time stamps in response to the detection of an event free period in the first observation periods and generates and stores activities of a type awake and corresponding time stamps in response to detection of the events in the second observation periods,

wherein the device for deriving the estimate of the in-bed time is arranged to derive the estimate of the in-bed time and

wherein the device for deriving the estimate of the out-bed time is arranged to derive the estimate of the out-bed time from the stored activities of the type asleep and corresponding time stamps.

5. System as claimed in claim 3 wherein the time stamp of the type asleep corresponds to the beginning of an event free period estimate incremented with a predetermined time increment.

6. System according to claim 3 wherein the system is arranged to derive the out-bed time on the basis of the time stamp corresponding to the activity of the type awake generated after the latest generation of the activity of the type asleep one of:

before and

within

the second observation period.

7. System according to claim 2,

wherein the system comprises at least one door sensor for detecting at least one of the opening and closing of an outside door, and

wherein in response to an event caused by the at least one of the opening and closing of the outside door a modified algorithm is used for determining the estimate of at least one of the actual in-bed time and actual out-bed time.

8. System according to claim 2, wherein the system is arranged to send a notification of a first type to a caregiver when at a first predetermined waiting time after the end of the second observation period an estimate of the actual out-bed time is not yet available.

9. System according to claim 8 wherein the system is arranged to send a notification of a second type to a caregiver when at a second predetermined waiting period after the end of the second observation period an estimate of the actual out-bed time is not yet available, which second predetermined waiting period is longer than the first predetermined waiting period.

10. System according to claim 2, wherein the processor is arranged to determine at least one of the usual in-bed time and the usual out-bed time on the basis of at least one of the estimates of the in-bed time and estimates of the out-bed time determined on preceding days.

11. System as claimed in claim 2, wherein the said first observation period depends on a reference in-bed time whereby the second observation period depends on a reference out-bed time.

12. System as claimed in claim 2, wherein at least one of the said first observation period and said second observation period depends on a position of the day in a week.

13. System as claimed in claim 2 wherein in a third observation period beginning at the end of the first observation period and ending at the beginning of the second observation period event free periods of at least a third length are detected in order to determine whether the person has come out of bed before the beginning of the second observation period.

14. A processor controlled system according to claim 1 wherein the processor includes a programmable processor and further comprising a memory loaded with a computer program with programming instructions enabling the programmable processor to establish functions of the devices of the processor.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium, comprising:

programming instructions stored in the medium, for use in the system according to claim 14.

4. System as claimed in 3,

wherein the system is arranged to derive a sleep quality parameter based on the activities and corresponding time stamps, which quality parameter indicates at least one of:

a number of sleep interruptions per night and

a total sleep duration per night, and

wherein the system is arranged to send a notification to a care giver in response to at least one of;

a detection that an increase of the number of sleep interruption exceeds a first threshold value and

a detection that a decrease of the total sleep duration exceeds a second threshold value.