This project' goal was to design a telepresence system that enables elderly/disabled people to live independently by giving caretakers and family members the ability to visit them virtually while also monitoring their health. This system included a camera and screen mounted on the device so the elderly could communicate with outside individuals.
The sponsor for this project was Dr. Bing Chen, and its duration was 2019 - 2020.
Capstone Team Members:
- Takumi Ito
- Andrew Carlson
- Joshua Pressler
Abstract:
As the US elder population grows and more and more people are wanting to live nearby their family instead of living at a nursing facility, the number of health care workers is unable to keep up. This results in rising costs for at-home care companies and less time being dedicated to each client. To help tackle this problem, as well as help provide elderly persons with the ability to live independently, we have created the Elder Longevity Support Apparatus, or ELSA. The ELSA system was also created for use in our sponsor Dr. Bing Chen’s Granny Pod, which is a small, simple home that can be quickly erected in a backyard and has active and passive solar elements, as well as other sustainability elements to reduce operating costs. It is meant to house an elderly family member or members who may otherwise need to reside in a retirement home.
ELSA is a telepresence system that enables elderly/disabled people to live independently by giving caretakers and family members the ability to virtually visit them while also monitoring their health using attached sensors. The ELSA system accomplishes this by placing a physical telepresence device within the elderly/disabled person’s home which has a webcam and is connected to the internet. This telepresence device connects to the remote user’s (caretaker's) device, whether it be a desktop, laptop, or mobile device, through a website and shows the remote user the visual and audio data recorded by the webcam on the device in real-time. The device also has a touchscreen monitor and speakers which allow the remote user to display their own webcam video and audio data into the Granny Pod space, which allows the local resident and the remote user to have a virtual face-to-face conversation. The remote user is also able to rotate the monitor/webcam assembly so that the local resident can be seen no matter where they are in the room.
The ELSA device is also equipped with voice recognition that will send notifications to caretakers with a single voice command in the case of an emergency. In this report, we will cover the design of the hardware and software of the project, as well as how the chassis was modelled and fabricated. We will discuss challenges faced during the completion of the project and give some recommendations as to how future developers could improve upon the product.
Read More
Contact Dr. Chen for full permissions to read more about the ELSA (Elder Longevity Support Apparatus) project, including a full definition and proposal.