Overview
The main goal of the proposed project IEGLO is the development of a handheld tracking device for elderly or Alzheimer disease people. At present, in Europe approximately 4.000.000 people are affected with Alzheimer's disease. Especially this people get very often in situations where they are un-oriented. They need mentoring by either their family members or nursing staff around the clock every day. A personal tracking would improve the situation for nursing staff significantly. Therefore, a Smartphone with special SW will incorporate (A)GNSS and infrastructure-based technology (WLAN, RFID) for basic positioning.
An evolution step will incorporate inertial sensors for data acquisition for collapse detection at first and pedestrian indoor navigation second. The patient’s location will be secure transmitted to a central server either by WLAN or GSM communication. Over the network (A)GNSS and EDAS data will be transmitted, too. A web-based service centre with an MMI interface visualizes the monitoring status and administrates the individual settings. The system is open for future GNSS extensions and will pave the potential for future innovations in GNSS by raising the adoption of GNSS due real application demonstration. The potential improvements for future GNSS indoor positioning will be outlined.
Additional to the monitoring of elderly people or Alzheimer disease patients, the proposed concept can be also used for child-tracking applications or outdoor activities. Furthermore, this system can be modified for emergency services to track the emergency personal. The consortium, distributed over whole Europe, with about 75% of SMEs (TeleConsult Austria GmbH, OECON GmbH - Germany and Tele+ Itala SAS - Italy) and 25% of R&D institutions (Institute of Geomatics - Spain and Industrial Research Institute for Automation and Measurements - Poland) stimulates the setup of new networks and forces a knowledge transfer, rising of international co-operation between SMEs and R&D institutions.