research article tv-based caring videophone system for the

Hindawi Publishing CorporationJournal of Electrical and Computer EngineeringVolume 2013 Article ID 651471 7 pageshttpdxdoiorg1011552013651471

Research ArticleTV-Based Caring Videophone System for the Elderly inthe Smart Home Environment

Jingshuang Shen Chongyang Zhang and Chuanwen Jiang

College of Electronics amp Electrical Engineering Shanghai Jiaotong University Shanghai 200240 China

Correspondence should be addressed to Chuanwen Jiang jiangcwsjtueducn

Received 5 March 2013 Revised 20 May 2013 Accepted 29 May 2013

Academic Editor Yong Fu

Copyright copy 2013 Jingshuang Shen et al This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons AttributionLicense which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properlycited

A novel videophone system for the elderly-care application is proposed Based on the detailed analysis of the elderlyrsquos physical andpsychological characteristics a TV-based caring videophone system for the elderly is developed an embedded multimedia deviceis designed to implement the interactive video and audio processing and IP-based communication in which TV is adopted asthe display terminal to achieve a low-cost but high-quality service Considering the userrsquos convenience many personalized designssuch as photo-based address book photo-click-dialing and touch pad based remote controller are developed tomake the proposedvideophone systemmore intuitive and easy to use for the elderly Based on SupportVectorMachine (SVM) algorithms an evaluationmodel is also developed with the data collected from the embedded multimedia device It is useful to evaluate the physical andpsychological health of the elderly

1 Introduction

As the age of the world general population increases moreand more elderly people are staying alone Statics indicatethat the population that is 65 years or older throughout theworld is steadily on the raise [1 2] It is estimated that by 2030this particular group will be over four hundred million inChina Thus the number of the elderly living alone will keepincreasing substantially Therefore the importance of elderlycare in their own home as long as possible is crucial [3 4]And the smart home elderly care has the potential to be a cost-effective alternative capable of providing quality health careand monitoring households for the elderly [5ndash7]

Various elderly-care approaches have been proposedrecently In [8] the authors proposed a sensoractuator net-works in smart homes for supporting the elderly and hand-icapped people In [9] the authors analyzed the data of thequestionnaire study and found that the rest roomsbathroomsand kitchens inconvenient and even dangerous places forthe elderly In [10] the authors introduced the sensortechnologies integrated in the smart home system for theelderly and developed a framework for the processing andcommunication of the extracted information In [11] theauthors suggested a smart homemonitoring system based on

intelligent wireless sensors network to provide a safe soundand secured living environment to the elderly However mostthe above approaches require sensors to be attached on thesubjects under surveillance It is inconvenient for the elderlytaking the clothes with these sensors There are also someapproaches without the sensors In [12] the authors devel-oped a low-cost television-operating-state telemonitoringsystem in caring for elderly people living alone However theauthors supposed that a television-operating-state expressesthe consistency of the rhythms of the long-established every-day rituals of a dweller

There are also many elderly-care systems developed forthe elderly and most of the elderly-care systems focus onhealth and safety surveillance [13ndash15] However spiritualneeds of the elderly are of the most importance In Chinawith the one-child-policy many families have only one childSince there are many younger peoples nowadays who selectto work and live in big cities which are usually far awayfrom their hometown and then their parents the elderly oftenlive lonelyThus the thing that communicating with childrenand friends frequently and easily becomes one of the urgentspiritual needs for the elderlyMeanwhile the elderly not onlywant to hear their relativesrsquo voices but also want to see theirfacial expression

2 Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Internet Internet

Microphone TV

TV

Multimediaterminal

Multimediaterminal

Remote

Camera

Server

controller

Figure 1 Overview of the whole videophone system

Existing videophone systems can be classified into twotypes The first type is the conventional videophone (alsocalled video telephone) a telephone with a video screenand is capable of full duplex (bidirectional) video and audiotransmissions for communication between people in real-time The early ATampT Picturephones and the widest usedmobile phones nowadays are belonging to this type Thereare many advantages of the conventional video phone [16]however the disadvantages such as expensiveness complexoperations of dial up and small screen lead it difficult forthe older age groups to use The other type is PC-basedvideo phone system which consists of one computer withvideophone software and the necessary peripherals suchas microphones and cameras headsets Compared with theconventional video phone the PC-based videophone hasadvantages of having large screen and being inexpensive butwith the more complex software configuration and operationas the cost Sufferedwith the ldquohigh-technology phobiardquomanyelderly people are reluctant to use the cumbersome PC-basedsoftware which makes the PC-based videophone difficult forthe elderly to use

In this work a TV-based caring videophone system isdeveloped for the elderly Firstly due to the fact that TVrepresents the main activity for the elderly people [17] it isadopted as the display terminal to achieve low-cost and high-quality service in this work Then considering the usingconvenience for the elderly personalized designs includingphoto-based address book photo-click dialing and touchpad based remote controller are provided to make it moreintuitive and easy to use for the elderly Due to the low-costand caring design the proposed videophone system is moresuitable for the elderly than the existing videophone systems

The rest of this paper is organized as followsThe systemrsquoshardware design and software design are given in Section 2 InSection 3 the design principles of caring videophone systembased on detailed analysis of the elderlyrsquos physical and psy-chological characteristics are introduced firstly and then thepersonalized design for the elderly is discussed Evaluationmodel of the proposed system based on SVM algorithm ispresented in Section 4 Section 5 gives the conclusion andfuture work

2 System Design

21 Hardware PlatformDesign To implement the caring vid-eophone inexpensively it is necessary to avoid any redesignand alteration on the current TV One possible solution is todevelop a low-cost embedded multimedia terminal so as toimplement the video-audio processing and communicationand provide the integrating connector for the necessaryperipheral devices such as TV cameramicrophone commu-nication server and touch pad based remote controller Thearchitecture of thewhole system is shown in Figure 1Here thecommunication server acts as one communication agent forthe IP-based video and audio interaction via internet In thiswork the software-based multiple point control unit (MCU)is also deployed on the server to provide the video conferencefunction for the systemThewireless remote controller is usedas the operation terminal for the elderly

Figure 2 gives the block diagram of the multimedia ter-minal of the proposed videophone system Video and Audiosampling module is used to collect the multimedia data andtransmit them to Video and Audio codec The multimediaprocessing (such as compress and decompress) IP commu-nication (such as the protocol stacks of SIP TCPUDP andIP) and peripheral management are all implemented by onehigh-performance system on chip (SoC Freescale iMX27 istaken as the SoC in this work) The internet access unitsincludingWiFi based wireless module are integrated into theoutput module User front-end module is used to collect theuserrsquos operation information Figure 3 gives the circuit boardof the embedded multimedia terminal Table 1 reveals thespecification requirements of the embedded system

22 Software SystemDesign As TV-based caring videophonesystem is designed for the elderly it only need to implementvideo communication and some basic functions such asaddress book and setting The architecture of software isdepicted in Figure 4 Initialization includes system initializa-tion and registration System initialization means processorinitialization SDRAM initialization and IO port initial-ization Registration is responsible for registering with theserver Setting is responsible for configuring resolution videoformat IP of the server and the terminal Add new and edit

Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering 3

DDR SDRAM Flash SD card

User front-endmodule

Freescale iMX27

sampling moduleVideo and audio

Video and audio

Video and audio

codec

output module

Ethernet WiFi Time

Figure 2 The block diagram of the multimedia terminal

RJ45USB

SDRAM

iMX27

Video and audioinput and output

WiFi

Flash

Figure 3 The circuit board of the embedded multimedia terminal

Table 1 Embedded System Specification Requirements

Characteristic SpecificationProcessor iMX27Processing performance 400MHZMemory 128MB 32 bit 133MHzDDRFlash 128MB 8 bit

Internet access Ethernet gt 100MWiFi gt 10M

Video and Audio codec TVP5150AM1PBS (Ultralow-PowerNTSCPAL Video codec)

can help users add or edit content in the address book Call isresponsible for implementing video communication

3 Personalized Design for the Elderly

31 The Elderlyrsquos Characteristics and Design Principles Theelderly have the unique characteristics different from theother people For example their eyesight and memory arepoor and they need long time to accept new thingsTherefore

detailed analysis is necessary to design the suitable elderly-care products Table 1 presents both the physical characteris-tics and psychological characteristics of the elderly (left sideof the Table 2) Accordingly the design principles of theelderly-oriented device or system can be concluded as shownin the right side of Table 1 Thus to make the videophonesystem suitable for the elderly the principles in Table 1 shouldbe taken in the design processing

According to the principles of design in Table 2 a fewof personalized designs such as user interface photo-basedaddress book photo-click dialing and touch-based remotecontroller are developed in the caring videophone system

32 Personalized Design of the User Interface In order togive the elderly the comfortable visual feelings many caringprinciples are considered in the design of the system soft-warersquos user interface Firstly the icons number in each pageis restricted to less than 10 [8] which can make the elderlyfeel it is simple clear and easy to use Secondly the lightblue which is neither fancy nor monotonous is selected asthe background color to calm the elderlyrsquos mentality Finallyfor different icons with text different colors with appropriatecontrast are adopted to make the elderly identify them easily


Table 2 Design principles by analyzing the elderlyrsquos physical and psychological characteristics

The elderlyrsquos characteristics Design principles

Vision Hyperopiamdashserious decline in close visionastigmatismmdashfocus difficulty poor adjusting capacity toadapt lightmdashdiscomfort of glare

Interface Appropriate color and bigger font sizes are neededIllustration (1) Graphic illustration which avoids fancy backgroundand unnecessary information is necessary (2) It also should increasethe contrast between content and backgroundControl Surface of controller should not use highly reflectivematerial to avoid glare generation

Thought It is easy for the aged to form mindset resulting inthat they need to spend a long time to form a new concept

Interface Concise text graphic illustration and enough timeinformation display make the aged fully comprehensive

Consumer attitude economical practical and reliable Cost LowMemory [18] Sharp decline in short-term memory poorability of converting short-term memory into long-termmemory and significant decrease in mechanical memorizing

Operation The more meaningful memorizing the better It shouldavoid using mechanical memorizing

Habitus [19] bone loss and being easy to fracture poorphysical flexibility clumsy action and poor endurance

Controller (1) It should operate in horizontal mode if the operatorneeds strength for reducing the probability of falling (2) Dropresistance pads in the corners are necessary

Touch Thin skin and elasticity loss weak ability of identifytexture and surface and poor sensitivity of temperature

Tip The system should provide definite feedback to let the elderlyknow what have been carried out when the buttons are pressedController (1) It should be textured surface for easily grip (2) It isbetter to provide temperature adjustment

Init ()

Setting () Add new ()

Register ()

Add newSetting

Resolutionvideo encodingserver address

user ID

NameIP numbercategoryaddress

Setting or categoryor add new

Call Edit

Edit

Category

Call () or edit ()

Videocommunication

System init ()

Figure 4 The architecture of software

and clearly One example of the user interface page is shownin Figure 5

33 Photo-Based Address Book and Photo-Click Dialing Fig-ure 6 shows photo-based Address book interface It only listsphoto name and IP number which can make the elderly feelit is simple Considering elderly peoplersquos poor vision lookingup conspicuous photos is proposed instead of searchingnames in traditional way It is also convenient for the elderlyto find people whose names they do not remember or areidentical in address book (eg sister in Figure 6) The designof photo-click-dial frees the elderly from remembering thelong telephone numbers They just need click photos to chatwith the corresponding personThus the operation becomesmuch easier for the elderly

Since the connection of TV-based caring videophone sys-tems via network saving huge telephone fee is its significantadvantage IP-based communication and TV as the displayterminal achieve low cost which will make it popular amongthe elderly group

34 Touch-Based Wireless Remote Controller We select lightblue as background color which can make the elderly pleas-ant Meanwhile strong contrast (between buttons and maincolor between fonts and background) makes easy the elderlyto distinguish the buttons Function partition and keyarrangement are reasonable The upper part of panel is touchpad and the lower is button area The upper part of buttonarea is various function keys and the lower is number keys Abig ldquoOKrdquo button as the most frequently used key is designed


Figure 5 The initial interface page of the videophone

Figure 6 Photo-based Address book (left) and the wireless remotecontroller (right)

at the center of function keys regionThe size of every buttonand the font is appropriate

Touch pad reduces the number of pressing keys andprovides many fool operations such as menu tips and click-ok which can reduce probability of pressing wrong buttonsThe controller has a built-small heater which can adjust itstemperature to make the elderly feel warm in winter All ofour design is based on the principles obtained by analyzingthe elderly physical and psychological characteristics indetail We make each operation as easy as possible and everyinterface much more comfortable

In order to evaluate the total performance of the proposedvideophone comparisonwith the traditional videophone andPC-based videophone are taken in the following four aspects

(a) Service quality TV is taken as the display terminalwhich can let the proposed videophone provide high-er video quality than the others two systems

(b) Operation Complexity The caring designs such asphoto-based address book and photo-click dial makethe proposed system more intuitive and facilitativefor the elderlyThe touch-based remote controller canalso make the operation more simple and intuitionis-tic

(c) User Interface The special elderly-oriented designssuch as the iconrsquos number and size and backgroundcolor make the user interface of the proposed systemmore suitable for the elderly

(d) Cost Using the home-device TV and low-costembedded multimedia terminal as the key compo-nents of the videophone without the need of PC andthe traditional but expensive videophone device theproposed system is cheaper for the user

Table 3 gives the conclusion results of the comparisonThe following can be drawn from Table 3 comparing with

the traditional videophone and PC-based videophone theproposed system can provide higher display quality moreeasily operation more humanized user interface and lesscost which make it more suitable for the elderly than theexisting videophone system

4 Health Evaluating Model

The other important function of the videophone system is toevaluate the physical and psychological health of the elderlyIn this work four physical and psychological characteristicsare analyzed normal melancholy irritability and sickThesecharacteristics represent the state of the elderlyrsquos physicaland psychological health Different characteristic can bediscriminated with the tiny habit change in the daily life It issupposed that the elderly watch TV and call the family andother people with the videophone system Since almost allthe TV operations such as the turning onoff TV channelchanging are implemented using the TV controller thesedata can be collected stored and analyzed by the CPU(SoC on the multimedia terminal device) to get many usefulTV-using information the frequency of turning onoff TVthe time-length of each watch the watching TV channelthe frequency of calling and the time-length of each calland so forth Considering the fact that TV represents themain activity for the elderly people then the daily TV-using-information can be used to evaluate the psychological healthwhich can be shown in Figure 7

The collected TV-using-information are then taken asthe input data of one Support Vector Machine (SVM) basedhealth evaluating model This model can be developed andtrained off-line while used in this proposed videophone sys-tem to realize real-time health detection

Among the data classification intelligent algorithmsSVM has recently achieved a great success in the forecastingand evaluating system [20] The SVMwas first introduced byVapnik in the 1990s for classification and has been successful-ly applied to the problems of pattern classification [21] partic-ularly the classification of two different categories of patternsThe fundamental principle of classification using the SVM isto separate the two categories of patterns as far as possible It isbased on the structural risk minimization principle incorpo-rating capacity control to prevent overfitting and thus is apartial solution to the bias-variance trade-offdilemmaAboutthe linear separable problem the optimal classification func-tion is as follows

119891 (120596) = sgn (120596119909 + 119887)

= sgn119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894(119909119894 119909) + 119887

(1)

where 119909119894is the sample vector 119910

119894is the sample classification 120572

is the corresponding optimal solution for support vector and119887 is deviationThe value of 119887 can be solved from the constraintcondition 120572

119894[119910119894(120596119909119894+ 119887) minus 1] = 0 The basic idea of the SVM

is to map data 119909 into a higher-dimensional feature space via anonlinearmappingThen the linear classification (regression)in the high-dimensional space is equivalent to the nonlinear


Table 3 Comparison between the proposed videophone and the other two videophones

Traditional videophone PC-based videophone Proposed videophoneService quality (display resolution) Low Moderate HighOperation complexity Complex Complex EasyUser interface Young oriented Young oriented Elderly orientedCost High High Low

Input data Evaluating result

Normal

Melancholy

Irritability

Sick

The frequency of turning

onoff TV (times per day)

The time length of each

watching TV

(minutes)

The used watchingchannel

(quantity per day)

The frequency ofcalling (times per day)

The time length of calling(minutes)

Figure 7 Evaluating the physical and psychological health usingTV-using information

classification (regression) in the low-dimensional space Thetransform is simplified of SVM by using the kernel functionThen the classification function is as follows

119891 (120596) = sgn(119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894119870(119909119894 119909) + 119887) (2)

where the function119870 is the kernel function In this study wechoose the radial basis function (RBF) as the kernel functionwhich can be described as follows

119896 (119909119894 119909119895) = exp (minus1205741003817100381710038171003817

1003817119909119894minus 119909119895

10038171003817100381710038171003817

2

) (3)

SVM is the two-class classifier However the multiclassclassifier is required to solve the practical problem Considera set of 119899 samples is divided into 119896 categories 119909

119894is the sample

and 119910119894is the sample type as (119909

119894 119910119894) 119894 = 1 2 119899 119909

119894isin 119877119899

119910119894isin 1 2 119896In this paper we select 50 set samples including 40 set

training samples and 10 testing samples to test and verifythe performance of the proposed health evaluating model

Table 4 The average detection accuracy comparison between theSVMMODEL and the other two methods

Normal Melancholy Irritability SickSVM 943 914 905 956ANN 908 882 891 935GA 921 907 886 939

Besides SVM algorithm Artificial Neural Network algorithm(ANN) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) also are also selected asthe reference classifiers to compare their performance Thesamples are the same for the three algorithms In this paperwe select 10 set samples at random and calculate classifiedaccuracy with SVM ANN and GA models The result ofthe experiments shows that the SVM-based model is moreaccurate than other methods the detection accuracy of SVMmodel is higher than that of other twomethods in all the fourkinds of psychological health Table 4 gives the detailed resultof SVMmodel compared with the other models

5 Conclusion

A TV-based caring videophone system for the elderly isdeveloped in thisworkMany special and caring designs suchas photo-based address book photo-click-dialing and touchpad based remote controller are developed in the proposedvideophone system which makes the proposed system moreintuitive and easy to use for the elderly Based on SVMalgorithm the model is also developed which can evaluatethe physical and psychological health of the elderlyThe resultshows that this model can achieve the result more accuratelythan the other intelligent models However there is a lot ofroom to improve for the model First an online evaluatingsystemwould be developedThe result would be shown in thevideophone system at real time Second more sensors datashould be gathered including power consumption and doorcontacts in the smart homes environment

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the NSF of China under grantno 61001147 and by the ChinaNational Key Technology RampDProgram under Grant no 2012BAH07B01

References

[1] A Gaddam S C Mukhopadhyay and G S Gupta ldquoTrial ampexperimentation of a smart home monitoring system for elder-lyrdquo in Proceedings of the IEEE International Instrumentation and


Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC rsquo11) pp 849ndash854May 2011

[2] Z A Khan andW Sohn ldquoAbnormal human activity recognitionsystem based on R-transform and kernel discriminant tech-nique for elderly home carerdquo IEEE Transactions on ConsumerElectronics vol 57 no 4 pp 1843ndash1850 2011

[3] X Zhang HWang and Z Yu ldquoToward a smart home environ-ment for elder people based on situation analysisrdquo in Proceed-ings of the Symposia and Workshops on Ubiquitous Autonomicand Trusted Computing pp 7ndash12 October 2010

[4] A Gaddam S C Mukhopadhyay and G S Gupta ldquoSmarthome using optimized number of wireless sensors for elderlycarerdquo in Proceedings of the Applied Electromagnetics Conference(AEMC rsquo09) December 2009

[5] J-Y Son J-H Park K-D Moon and Y-H Lee ldquoResource-aware smart home management system by constructingresource relation graphrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Elec-tronics vol 57 no 3 pp 1112ndash1119 2011

[6] C Fabbricatore M Zucker S Ziganki and A P KarduckldquoTowards an unified architecture for smart home and ambientassisted living solutions a focus on elderly peoplerdquo in Pro-ceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on DigitalEcosystems and Technologies (DEST rsquo11) pp 305ndash311 DaejeonRepublic of Korea June 2011

[7] D-M Han and J-H Lim ldquoSmart home energy managementsystem using IEEE 802154 and zigbeerdquo IEEE Transactions onConsumer Electronics vol 56 no 3 pp 1403ndash1410 2010

[8] S Dengler A Awad and F Dressler ldquoSensoractuator networksin Smart Homes for supporting elderly and handicapped peo-plerdquo in Proceedings of the 21st International Conference onAdvanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops(AINAW rsquo07) pp 863ndash868 May 2007

[9] M-S Kang K M Kim and H-C Kim ldquoA questionnaire studyfor the design of smart home for the elderlyrdquo in Proceedingsof the Mobile E-Health for Developing Countries and 8th Inter-national Conference on E-Health Networking Applications andServices (HEALTHCOM rsquo06) pp 265ndash268 August 2006

[10] A Arcelus R Goubran M H Jones and F Knoefel ldquoInte-gration of smart home technologies in a health monitoringsystem for the elderlyrdquo in Proceedings of the 21st InternationalConference on Advanced Information Networking and Applica-tionsWorkshopsSymposia (AINAW rsquo07) pp 820ndash825May 2007

[11] A Gaddam S C Mukhopadhyay and G S Gupta ldquoTowardsthe development of a cognitive sensors network-based home forelder carerdquo in Proceedings of the 6th International Conference onWireless and Mobile Communications (ICWMC rsquo10) pp 484ndash491 esp September 2010

[12] K Nakajima A Kamiya H Matsui et al ldquoTelemonitoringsystem of televisionrsquos operation state for elderly people livingalonerdquo in Proceedings of the Society of Instrument and ControlEngineers Annual Conference (SICE rsquo07) pp 303ndash304 Septem-ber 2007

[13] K Raij and P Lehto ldquoCaring TV as a service design with and forelderly peoplerdquo Studies in Computational Intelligence vol 142pp 481ndash488 2008

[14] F Grossi G Matrella I DeMunari and P Ciampolini ldquoA flexi-ble home automation system applied to elderly carerdquo inProceed-ings of the Digest of Technical Papers International Conference onConsumer Electronics (ICCE rsquo07) January 2007

[15] S Takahashi S Maeda N Tsurda and T Morimoto ldquoA homehealth care system for elderly peoplerdquo Science and Technologyvol 2 pp 97ndash102 2003

[16] M Pattison and A Stedmon ldquoInclusive design and human fac-tors designing mobile phones for older usersrdquo PsychNologyJournal vol 4 no 3 pp 267ndash284 2006

[17] M Ghorbel F Arab and M Mokhtari ldquoAssistive housing casestudy in a residence for elderly peoplerdquo in Proceedings of the 2ndInternational Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologiesfor Healthcare (PervasiveHealth rsquo08) pp 140ndash143 fin February2008

[18] H Jing-hengHealth Education FudanUniberstiy Press Shang-hai China 4th edition 2006

[19] Y Hioka M Okamoto K Kobayashi Y Haneda and A Kat-aoka ldquoAdisplay-mounted high-quality stereomicrophone arrayfor high-definition videophone systemrdquo IEEE Transactions onConsumer Electronics vol 54 no 2 pp 778ndash786 2008

[20] C-W Hsu and C-J Lin ldquoA comparison of methods for mul-ticlass support vector machinesrdquo IEEE Transactions on NeuralNetworks vol 13 no 2 pp 415ndash425 2002

[21] V Vapnik The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory SpringerNew York NY USA 1995

International Journal of

AerospaceEngineeringHindawi Publishing Corporationhttpwwwhindawicom Volume 2014

RoboticsJournal of

Hindawi Publishing Corporationhttpwwwhindawicom Volume 2014


Active and Passive Electronic Components

Control Scienceand Engineering

Journal of



RotatingMachinery


Hindawi Publishing Corporation httpwwwhindawicom

Journal ofEngineeringVolume 2014

Submit your manuscripts athttpwwwhindawicom

VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration


Civil EngineeringAdvances in

Acoustics and VibrationAdvances in



Electrical and Computer Engineering

Journal of

Advances inOptoElectronics


Volume 2014

The Scientific World JournalHindawi Publishing Corporation httpwwwhindawicom Volume 2014

SensorsJournal of


Modelling amp Simulation in EngineeringHindawi Publishing Corporation httpwwwhindawicom Volume 2014


Chemical EngineeringInternational Journal of Antennas and

Propagation




Navigation and Observation



DistributedSensor Networks



Internet Internet

Microphone TV

TV

Multimediaterminal

Multimediaterminal

Remote

Camera

Server

controller

Figure 1 Overview of the whole videophone system

Existing videophone systems can be classified into twotypes The first type is the conventional videophone (alsocalled video telephone) a telephone with a video screenand is capable of full duplex (bidirectional) video and audiotransmissions for communication between people in real-time The early ATampT Picturephones and the widest usedmobile phones nowadays are belonging to this type Thereare many advantages of the conventional video phone [16]however the disadvantages such as expensiveness complexoperations of dial up and small screen lead it difficult forthe older age groups to use The other type is PC-basedvideo phone system which consists of one computer withvideophone software and the necessary peripherals suchas microphones and cameras headsets Compared with theconventional video phone the PC-based videophone hasadvantages of having large screen and being inexpensive butwith the more complex software configuration and operationas the cost Sufferedwith the ldquohigh-technology phobiardquomanyelderly people are reluctant to use the cumbersome PC-basedsoftware which makes the PC-based videophone difficult forthe elderly to use

In this work a TV-based caring videophone system isdeveloped for the elderly Firstly due to the fact that TVrepresents the main activity for the elderly people [17] it isadopted as the display terminal to achieve low-cost and high-quality service in this work Then considering the usingconvenience for the elderly personalized designs includingphoto-based address book photo-click dialing and touchpad based remote controller are provided to make it moreintuitive and easy to use for the elderly Due to the low-costand caring design the proposed videophone system is moresuitable for the elderly than the existing videophone systems

The rest of this paper is organized as followsThe systemrsquoshardware design and software design are given in Section 2 InSection 3 the design principles of caring videophone systembased on detailed analysis of the elderlyrsquos physical and psy-chological characteristics are introduced firstly and then thepersonalized design for the elderly is discussed Evaluationmodel of the proposed system based on SVM algorithm ispresented in Section 4 Section 5 gives the conclusion andfuture work

2 System Design

21 Hardware PlatformDesign To implement the caring vid-eophone inexpensively it is necessary to avoid any redesignand alteration on the current TV One possible solution is todevelop a low-cost embedded multimedia terminal so as toimplement the video-audio processing and communicationand provide the integrating connector for the necessaryperipheral devices such as TV cameramicrophone commu-nication server and touch pad based remote controller Thearchitecture of thewhole system is shown in Figure 1Here thecommunication server acts as one communication agent forthe IP-based video and audio interaction via internet In thiswork the software-based multiple point control unit (MCU)is also deployed on the server to provide the video conferencefunction for the systemThewireless remote controller is usedas the operation terminal for the elderly

Figure 2 gives the block diagram of the multimedia ter-minal of the proposed videophone system Video and Audiosampling module is used to collect the multimedia data andtransmit them to Video and Audio codec The multimediaprocessing (such as compress and decompress) IP commu-nication (such as the protocol stacks of SIP TCPUDP andIP) and peripheral management are all implemented by onehigh-performance system on chip (SoC Freescale iMX27 istaken as the SoC in this work) The internet access unitsincludingWiFi based wireless module are integrated into theoutput module User front-end module is used to collect theuserrsquos operation information Figure 3 gives the circuit boardof the embedded multimedia terminal Table 1 reveals thespecification requirements of the embedded system

22 Software SystemDesign As TV-based caring videophonesystem is designed for the elderly it only need to implementvideo communication and some basic functions such asaddress book and setting The architecture of software isdepicted in Figure 4 Initialization includes system initializa-tion and registration System initialization means processorinitialization SDRAM initialization and IO port initial-ization Registration is responsible for registering with theserver Setting is responsible for configuring resolution videoformat IP of the server and the terminal Add new and edit




Freescale iMX27


Video and audio

Video and audio

codec

output module

Ethernet WiFi Time


RJ45USB

SDRAM

iMX27


WiFi

Flash

























Init ()


Register ()

Add newSetting


user ID



Call Edit

Edit

Category

Call () or edit ()

Videocommunication

System init ()






















119891 (120596) = sgn (120596119909 + 119887)

= sgn119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894(119909119894 119909) + 119887

(1)










Normal

Melancholy

Irritability

Sick




watching TV

(minutes)


(quantity per day)





119891 (120596) = sgn(119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894119870(119909119894 119909) + 119887) (2)


119896 (119909119894 119909119895) = exp (minus1205741003817100381710038171003817

1003817119909119894minus 119909119895

10038171003817100381710038171003817

2

) (3)


119894is the sample


119894 119910119894) 119894 = 1 2 119899 119909

119894isin 119877119899






5 Conclusion


Acknowledgments


References


























RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation












Freescale iMX27


Video and audio

Video and audio

codec

output module

Ethernet WiFi Time


RJ45USB

SDRAM

iMX27


WiFi

Flash

























Init ()


Register ()

Add newSetting


user ID



Call Edit

Edit

Category

Call () or edit ()

Videocommunication

System init ()






















119891 (120596) = sgn (120596119909 + 119887)

= sgn119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894(119909119894 119909) + 119887

(1)










Normal

Melancholy

Irritability

Sick




watching TV

(minutes)


(quantity per day)





119891 (120596) = sgn(119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894119870(119909119894 119909) + 119887) (2)


119896 (119909119894 119909119895) = exp (minus1205741003817100381710038171003817

1003817119909119894minus 119909119895

10038171003817100381710038171003817

2

) (3)


119894is the sample


119894 119910119894) 119894 = 1 2 119899 119909

119894isin 119877119899






5 Conclusion


Acknowledgments


References


























RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation






















Init ()


Register ()

Add newSetting


user ID



Call Edit

Edit

Category

Call () or edit ()

Videocommunication

System init ()






















119891 (120596) = sgn (120596119909 + 119887)

= sgn119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894(119909119894 119909) + 119887

(1)










Normal

Melancholy

Irritability

Sick




watching TV

(minutes)


(quantity per day)





119891 (120596) = sgn(119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894119870(119909119894 119909) + 119887) (2)


119896 (119909119894 119909119895) = exp (minus1205741003817100381710038171003817

1003817119909119894minus 119909119895

10038171003817100381710038171003817

2

) (3)


119894is the sample


119894 119910119894) 119894 = 1 2 119899 119909

119894isin 119877119899






5 Conclusion


Acknowledgments


References


























RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation

























119891 (120596) = sgn (120596119909 + 119887)

= sgn119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894(119909119894 119909) + 119887

(1)










Normal

Melancholy

Irritability

Sick




watching TV

(minutes)


(quantity per day)





119891 (120596) = sgn(119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894119870(119909119894 119909) + 119887) (2)


119896 (119909119894 119909119895) = exp (minus1205741003817100381710038171003817

1003817119909119894minus 119909119895

10038171003817100381710038171003817

2

) (3)


119894is the sample


119894 119910119894) 119894 = 1 2 119899 119909

119894isin 119877119899






5 Conclusion


Acknowledgments


References


























RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation













Normal

Melancholy

Irritability

Sick




watching TV

(minutes)


(quantity per day)





119891 (120596) = sgn(119899

sum

119894=1

120572lowast

119894119910119894119870(119909119894 119909) + 119887) (2)


119896 (119909119894 119909119895) = exp (minus1205741003817100381710038171003817

1003817119909119894minus 119909119895

10038171003817100381710038171003817

2

) (3)


119894is the sample


119894 119910119894) 119894 = 1 2 119899 119909

119894isin 119877119899






5 Conclusion


Acknowledgments


References


























RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation

































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation









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