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Smart Rollators as a Cost-Effective Solution for Personalized Assistance Healthcare Ecosystem in Elderly Communities

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Proceedings of the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2022) (UCAmI 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 594))

Abstract

Nowadays, the ratio of elderly people per caregiver is increasing, and the statistics confirm that this trend will continue for decades. Healthcare systems need to change to support this unbalance. The have to move to enhanced, value-added and cost-effective services to patients, professionals and caregivers. Industry is already involved in this process, supported by new technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, data analytics and robotics. A parallel approach for Healthcare -called Health 4.0- now opens new opportunities.

Quality and personalized services require large amounts of data, which needs to be gathered in a transparent way. Assistive devices are already extensively used among the aging people. Transforming them into smart assistive devices provides the opportunity to monitor different parameters along their usual routines. In this paper, we explore the use of smart rollators in a ROS2 ecosystem to provide user condition services to the caregivers in order to reason about gait abnormalities and functional fitness conditions.

This work is partially funded by Programa Proyectos RETOS del Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Ref: RTI2018-096701-B-C21 (SAVIA: Sistema de Autonomía Variable para movIlidad Asistida) and also by the project UMA-CEIATECH23-2020 from Plan Propio de Investigación of the University of Málaga. The authors would like to thank to Macrosad Arroyo de La Miel carehome for their support on real user’s tests.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Walk-IT in this work has been built over a Kmina Comfort Rollator.

  2. 2.

    It is assumed that during a normal gait cycle, people push the rollator, but do not pull it.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ingeniería de Sistemas Integrados Group, University of Málaga, Malaga, Spain

    Manuel Fernandez-Carmona, Gabriela Verdezoto & Cristina Urdiales

  2. ITIS Software, Universidad de Málaga, Malaga, Spain

    Joaquin Ballesteros

  3. Robotics and Mechatronics Group, University of Málaga, Malaga, Spain

    Jesús M. Gómez-de-Gabriel

Authors
  1. Manuel Fernandez-Carmona
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  2. Gabriela Verdezoto
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  3. Joaquin Ballesteros
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  4. Jesús M. Gómez-de-Gabriel
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  5. Cristina Urdiales
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manuel Fernandez-Carmona .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Castilla-La Mancha University, Ciudad Real, Spain

    José Bravo

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Sergio Ochoa

  3. CICESE, Ensenada, Mexico

    Jesús Favela

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Fernandez-Carmona, M., Verdezoto, G., Ballesteros, J., Gómez-de-Gabriel, J.M., Urdiales, C. (2023). Smart Rollators as a Cost-Effective Solution for Personalized Assistance Healthcare Ecosystem in Elderly Communities. In: Bravo, J., Ochoa, S., Favela, J. (eds) Proceedings of the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2022). UCAmI 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 594. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21333-5_45

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