Nursing system

• US 8,214,082 B2
• Filed: 04/04/2008
• Issued: 07/03/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/31/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: National Chiao Tung University (Government of The Republic of China)
• Original Assignee: National Chiao Tung University (Government of The Republic of China)
• Inventors: Tsai, Chi-Yi, Chen, Chun-Wei, Song, Kai-Tai, Huang, Fu-Sheng, Lin, Chen-Yang, Lin, Zhi-Sheng
• Primary Examiner(s): Cheung, Mary
• Application Number:
  US12/062,843
• Publication Number:
  US 20090198374A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,551 Days
• Field of Search: 700/244, 700/245, 700/255, 700/259, 700/257, 700/56, 700/59, 700/62, 700/64, 700/65, 700/90, 700/250, 700/253, 700/258, 382/103, 705/2, 600/300, 600/382, 600/415, 600/424, 340/539.22
• US Class Current: 700/253
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1115 Monitoring leaving of a patient support, e.g. a bed or a wheelchair
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 for local operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/20 for computer-aided diagnosis, e.g. based on medical expert systems

Abstract

A nursing system of the present invention can position where a person to be nursed through a sensor network widely deployed in an environment, instantaneously detect if the person to be nursed has an accident, and forward a message to inform a relative or medical staff. An autonomous robot will actively move beside the person to be nursed and transmit real-time images to a remote computer or PDA so that the relative or medical staff can swiftly ascertain the situation of the person to be nursed and the person to be nursed in case of emergency can be rescued as soon as possible.

Claims

1. A nursing system, comprising:

a nursing apparatus comprising an on-board computer for controlling the nursing system;

a head motion mechanism controlled by the on-board computer;

a camera disposed on and driven by the head motion mechanism to rotate in multi-angle directions for capturing and forwarding images to the on-board computer;

a moving platform controlled by the on-board computer to move the nursing apparatus;

a ZigBee module for receiving signals from a wireless sensor network and transmitting the signals to the on-board computer;

a laser scanner for detecting if there is any blockade around the nursing apparatus and transmitting information to the on-board computer; and

an I/O device connected with the on-board computer for a user to communicate with the nursing apparatus; and

a body pose recognition module attached to a person to be nursed for detecting a body pose of the person by a triaxial accelerometer so as to determine if there is an emergency and to generate a determination result signal;

wherein;

the wireless sensor network is disposed as a positioning system for determining a position of the person to be nursed, receiving the determination result signal from the body pose recognition module and transferring the determination result signal to the nursing apparatus, via the ZigBee module,

the positions of the person to be nursed and the nursing apparatus are located according to a signal strength sent through the wireless sensor network,

the on-board computer is provided with a navigation behavior control function for controlling the moving platform according to detected information of the laser scanner, the positions of the person to be nursed and the nursing apparatus so as to enable the nursing apparatus to perform a plurality of specific moving behaviors, and

the on-board computer models the dynamic relationship between the nursing apparatus and the person to be nursed as a linear-time-varying system (LTV), and converts the coordinates of the nursing apparatus and the camera to derive a dynamic error-state model with reference to an image plane of the camera so that the image of the person to be nursed is maintained at the center of the image plane of the camera.

2. The nursing system of claim 1, further comprising a remote receiver for receiving signals issued by the nursing apparatus, via an external network.

3. The nursing system of claim 2, wherein the external network is a WiFi/3G network system.

4. The nursing system of claim 2, wherein the remote receiver comprises one selected from a group consisting of a mobile phone, a personal computer, a PDA and a smart phone.

5. The nursing system of claim 2, wherein the on-board computer is further provided with an emergency message transmission function for transmitting an emergency message to the remote receiver equipped on a medical staff or a family member, via the external network.

6. The nursing system of claim 5, wherein the nursing person is one of a relative or a medical staff.

7. The nursing system of claim 1, wherein the on-board computer is further provided with a human face tracing and detecting function for using the camera to capture the image and detect a position of a face of the person to be nursed in the image and controlling the head motion mechanism to stably move the camera so as to keep track of the face of the person to be nursed.

8. The nursing system of claim 1, wherein the specific moving behaviors comprise:

a blockade-dodging behavior for making the nursing apparatus dodge a blockade ahead;

a target-tracing behavior for adjusting a forward-moving direction of the nursing apparatus so that the nursing apparatus moves toward the person to be nursed; and

a boundary-moving behavior for making the nursing apparatus move forward along a boundary of an environment by keeping a fixed distance away from a closer side of the boundary.

9. The nursing system of claim 1, wherein the body pose recognition module is mounted to a waist portion of the person to be nursed and utilizes a dynamic acceleration value at the waist portion to represent a state of a center of gravity of the person to be nursed.

10. The nursing system of claim 9, wherein the body pose recognition module measures the dynamic acceleration value of the person to be nursed and acquires the dynamic acceleration value with a triaxial accelerometer to determine a body pose of the person to be nursed.

11. The nursing system of claim 10, wherein an X-axis, a Y-axis and a Z-axis are defined in a right direction, a top direction and a rear direction of a body of the person to be nursed respectively.

12. The nursing system of claim 1, wherein the camera further comprises:

an image compression function for processing received images; and

a video transmission function for transmitting the received images from the on-board computer to the remote receiver, via the external network.

13. The nursing system of claim 1, wherein the person to be nursed is one selected from a group consisting of an aged person, a child or a patient.

14. A nursing system, comprising:

a nursing apparatus comprising an on-board computer for controlling the nursing system;

a camera disposed on a head motion mechanism to rotate in multi-angle directions for capturing and forwarding an image;

a ZigBee module;

a laser scanner disposed to detect if there is any blockade around the nursing apparatus;

a body pose recognition module attached to a person to be nursed for detecting a body pose of the person so as to determine if there is an emergency, and for communicating with the Zigbee module of the nursing apparatus, via a wireless sensor network; and

a remote receiver for receiving signals issued by the nursing apparatus, via an external network,

wherein the body pose recognition module is mounted to a waist portion of the person to be nursed and utilizes a dynamic acceleration value at the waist portion to represent a state of a center of gravity of the person to be nursed, and

wherein the on-board computer models the dynamic relationship between the nursing apparatus and the person to be nursed as a linear-time-varying system (LTV), and converts the coordinates of the nursing apparatus and the camera to derive a dynamic error-state model with reference to an image plane of the camera so that the image of the person to be nursed is maintained at the center of the image plane of the camera.

15. The nursing system of claim 14, wherein the remote receiver comprises one selected from a group consisting of a mobile phone, a personal computer, a PDA and a smart phone, and wherein the external network is a WiFi/3G network system.

16. The nursing system of claim 14, wherein the on-board computer is installed in the nursing apparatus to capture the image and detect a position of a face of the person to be nursed in the image, and to control the head motion mechanism to move the camera so as to keep track of the face of the person to be nursed.

17. The nursing system of claim 14, wherein the body pose recognition module measures the dynamic acceleration value of the person to be nursed and acquires the dynamic acceleration value with a triaxial accelerometer to determine a body pose of the person to be nursed.

18. The nursing system of claim 16, wherein the on-board computer installed in the nursing apparatus is further configured to transmit an emergency message to the remote receiver equipped on a medical staff or a family member, via the external network.

19. A nursing system, comprising:

a nursing apparatus comprising a camera arranged to rotate in multi-angle directions and capture images;

a moving platform;

a ZigBee module arranged to communicate, via a wireless sensor network;

a laser scanner arranged to detect if there is any blockade around the nursing apparatus; and

an on-board computer arranged to control the camera, the moving platform, the ZigBee module and the laser scanner; and

a body pose recognition module attached to a person to be nursed to detect a body pose of the person so as to determine if there is an emergency,

wherein the wireless sensor network is disposed as a positioning system to determine a position of the person to be nursed,

wherein positions of the person to be nursed and the nursing apparatus are located according to a signal strength sent, via the wireless sensor network,

wherein the on-board computer is provided with a navigation behavior control function to control the moving platform according to information from the laser scanner, the positions of the person to be nursed and the nursing apparatus so as to enable the nursing apparatus to perform a plurality of specific moving behaviors, and

wherein the on-board computer models the dynamic relationship between the nursing apparatus and the person to be nursed as a linear-time-varying system (LTV), and converts the coordinates of the nursing apparatus and the camera to derive a dynamic error-state model with reference to an image plane of the camera so that the image of the person to be nursed is maintained at the center of the image plane of the camera.

20. The nursing system of claim 19, further comprising a remote receiver coupled to receive signals issued by the nursing apparatus, via an external network, wherein the remote receiver is one of a mobile phone, a personal computer, a PDA and a smart phone.