Indoor human/robot localization using robust multi-modal data fusion

Home automation is now implemented in many retirement homes in order to improve elderly´s autonomy and safety. Smart homes allow to monitor the activities of elderly persons using information coming from different sensors. The ADL (Activities of Daily Living) are used to evaluate the ability of a person to perform on their own a selection of the activities which are essential for independent living in everyday life. The ADL are then used to detect deviations in a person´s behaviour. Indoor localization based on the fusion of heterogeneous data from different sensors, is then essential for ADL characterization. For this purpose, a robust data fusion method is presented in this work through a multi-modal analysis to monitor the activities of elderly people (immobility, walking, etc) in a smart home. The paper describes the installation of sensors in a Living Lab and the preliminary experimental results using a set of Pyroelectric Infra Red (PIR) sensors, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) distance measurement and the outcome of a noise analysis. Within a set-membership framework, our algorithm for robust localization employs a multi-modal data fusion approach dealing with faulty measurements.