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Detecting Bed Occupancy Using Thermal Sensing Technology: A Feasibility Study

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Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PH 2021)

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Abstract

Measures of sleep and its disturbances can be detected by monitoring bed occupancy. These measures can also be used for alerting of bed exits or for determining sleep quality. This paper introduces an unobtrusive approach to detecting bed occupancy using low resolution thermal sensing technology. Thermal sensors operate regardless of lighting conditions and offer a high level of privacy making them ideal for the bedroom environment. The optimum bed occupancy detection algorithm was determined and tested on over 55,000 frames of 32 × 32 thermal sensor data. The developed solution to detect bed occupancy achieved an accuracy of 0.997. In this approach the location of the bed and the location of the participant is considered by classification rules to determine bed occupancy. The approach was evaluated using thermal sensor and bed pressure sensor data. Future work will focus on automatic detection of the bed location and improving the system by further reducing the false positives caused from residual heat.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ulster University, Newtownabbey, BT37 0QB, Northern Ireland, UK

    Rebecca Hand, Ian Cleland, Chris Nugent & Jonathan Synnott

Authors
  1. Rebecca Hand
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  2. Ian Cleland
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  3. Chris Nugent
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  4. Jonathan Synnott
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rebecca Hand .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel

    Hadas Lewy

  2. Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel

    Refael Barkan

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Hand, R., Cleland, I., Nugent, C., Synnott, J. (2022). Detecting Bed Occupancy Using Thermal Sensing Technology: A Feasibility Study. In: Lewy, H., Barkan, R. (eds) Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare. PH 2021. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 431. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99194-4_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99194-4_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-99193-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-99194-4

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