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Sensing from the basement: a feasibility study of unobtrusive and low-cost home activity recognition

Published: 15 October 2006 Publication History

Abstract

The home deployment of sensor-based systems offers many opportunities, particularly in the area of using sensor-based systems to support aging in place by monitoring an elder's activities of daily living. But existing approaches to home activity recognition are typically expensive, difficult to install, or intrude into the living space. This paper considers the feasibility of a new approach that "reaches into the home" via the existing infrastructure. Specifically, we deploy a small number of low-cost sensors at critical locations in a home's water distribution infrastructure. Based on water usage patterns, we can then infer activities in the home. To examine the feasibility of this approach, we deployed real sensors into a real home for six weeks. Among other findings, we show that a model built on microphone-based sensors that are placed away from systematic noise sources can identify 100% of clothes washer usage, 95% of dishwasher usage, 94% of showers, 88% of toilet flushes, 73% of bathroom sink activity lasting ten seconds or longer, and 81% of kitchen sink activity lasting ten seconds or longer. While there are clear limits to what activities can be detected when analyzing water usage, our new approach represents a sweet spot in the tradeoff between what information is collected at what cost.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    UIST '06: Proceedings of the 19th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
    October 2006
    354 pages
    ISBN:1595933131
    DOI:10.1145/1166253
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    Published: 15 October 2006

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    Author Tags

    1. activity recognition
    2. sensing in the home
    3. sensor-based models

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    • (2025)Limits of speech in connected homesInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103404195:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2025
    • (2024)Investigating Perspectives of and Experiences with Low Cost Commercial Fitness WearablesProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36997408:4(1-22)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2024
    • (2024)Older Generation: Self-Powered IoTs, Home-Life and “Ageing Well”Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685410(1-14)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
    • (2023)waterFSA: A Contact-Less Water Flow Source Analyzer for the Household to Enable HAR and ADL Recognition2023 IEEE International Conference on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE)10.1109/WETICE57085.2023.10477819(1-6)Online publication date: 14-Dec-2023
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    • (2022)Battery-Powered Wireless Sensor Network for Non-Invasive Monitoring of Water Usage Events in Premise Plumbing Systems2022 IEEE Sensors10.1109/SENSORS52175.2022.9967276(1-4)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2022
    • (2021)Watt’s up at Home? Smart Meter Data Analytics from a Consumer-Centric PerspectiveEnergies10.3390/en1403071914:3(719)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2021
    • (2021)Entity Recommendation for Everyday Digital TasksACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/345891928:5(1-41)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
    • (2021)Know the Flow: Non-Contact Magnetic Flow Rate Sensing for Water MetersIEEE Sensors Journal10.1109/JSEN.2020.301484321:1(802-811)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2021
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