Assistance in smart homes: Combining passive RFID localization and load signatures of electrical devices

Most industrialized countries are facing an important aging of their population. To meet needs of seniors and meet economic and sociological challenges such as the pressure on health support services for semi-autonomous persons, smart home technology is considered by many researchers as a promising potential solution. This approach proposes to use ubiquitous sensors hidden in the environment for monitoring and detecting behavioral abnormalities associated with cognitive deficits and then do a proper guidance by giving hints using many kinds of effectors (light, sound, screen, etc.). In a smart environment, assistive system is an important technology in order to fulfill the need to provide support in living environment for people with cognitive deficit. In this paper, we present a new affordable multi-agents assistance system who exploits qualitative spatial reasoning from a combination of RFID localization of everyday life objects and load signature of appliances. We also present promising results of experiments conducted on this new assistance system with real case scenarios of daily living.