The 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2012)

Nov. 26-28, 2012 in Daejeon Convention Center(DCC), Daejeon, Korea

A Space Identification System and Its Robot Application

Using Wearable Devices

Sangseung Kang, Daeha Lee, Cheonshu Park, Jaehong Kim Robot/Cognitive Convergence Research Department, ETRI, Daejeon, 305-700, Korea

(E-mail: {kss, bigsum, bettle, jhkim504}@etri.re.kr)

Abstract - In this paper, we present a space identification

system and its robot application using wearable devices.

The system was developed to recognize the current space

information of the user based on data fusion from signal

strengths, infrared lights, and network topology information

through a wireless sensor network environment. The

system was also implemented to determine on reference to

the result data of activity recognition. As a case of our

robot application, we show a vision-based user approach.

In near distance within less than five meters, the robot can

find people using a vision-based algorithm. When the

robot is called, the robot moves to the location using space

identification, and gets people’s faces information in the

space using face recognition algorithm, and calculates the

average size of faces in each group, and estimates a

distance apart, and then approaches the caller.

Keywords - space identification, user approach, wearable

device.

1. Introduction

As the population of elderly people increases, the

demand for their daily life care will become a greater

priority. Robots are ready to assist with elder care[1]. We

conducted research into elderly care and developed an

integrated robot service system for the elderly[2]. The

main objective of the developed system is to provide

convenient services, including health checkups, mental

fitness, and entertainment services for senior users.

Another main objective of the system is to deal with

sudden emergency situations and calls faced by elderly

people. To effectively perform these services, it is

necessary to recognize the user’s location[3].

In this paper, we present a space identification system

and robot application. The system was developed to

recognize the current location information of the user

based on a fusion of data from signal strengths, infrared

lights, activity recognition results, and network topology

information. We also show a vision-based user approach

service as an example of robot application.

2. Space Identification

We developed a system for estimating the location of a

user using space identification. For the space recognition

of the developed system, we classify the space where the

user is located through a fusion of the available received

signal strength indicator, infrared light, and network

topology information through a wireless sensor network

environment. A user device was developed in a wearable

type that is worn on the wrist. The user’s device transmits

messages with a server through fixed gateway and access

point devices. An infrared light message can be considered

definite space information, but it has a problem with out of

sight recognition. Signal strength data can be a good

feature for space identification, but it can be lost as the

data are broadcasted. Network topology information is

also used to estimate user’s position. The developed

system fuses the above types of features as a component

for the determination of a space.

3. Robot Application

We also developed a robot application with space

identification system. When the robot is called, the robot

moves to the target location using space identification.

After the robot arrives at the target location, the robot

scans face information of people who were around the

location. The robot estimates a distance between the robot

and the user using average face size information. It also

infers a direction by calculating a deviation of a center of

the average size from a center of the entire image. The

robot determines and moves to the target position from the

distance and direction information. As approaching the

target position within less than two meters, the robot

searches the caller using a face recognition algorithm. The

robot then approaches the caller.

Acknowledgement

This work was jointly supported by the R&D program

of the Korea Ministry of Knowledge and Economy (MKE)

and the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial

Technology (KEIT).

References

[1] Broekens J, Heerink M, Rosendal H, "The effectiveness

of assistive social robots in elderly care: a review,"

Gerontechnology journal, Vol. 8(2), pp.94-103, 2009.

[2] S. Kang, J. Kim, Y. Ha, "Indoor Location Recognition

System Using Environmental Sensors," Proc. of the 11th

Intl’ Conf. on Control, Automation and Systems, 2011.

[3] R. Samadian and S. Noorhosseini, "Probabilistic Support

Vector Machine Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks,"

ETRI Journal, vol.33, no.6, pp.924-934, Dec. 2011.

193978-1-4673-3112-8/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

2012 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI)

Daejeon, Korea / November 26-29, 2012