As you will see from the video below, this 2011 prototype tag, measures location quite accurately. TS05b achieves impressive results considering it is operating inside a home with brick, and tile walls, and large domestic appliances. For example, even 2015-era WiFi-based, or BLE-based trackers are lucky to achieve +/- 3-meter accuracy indoors.
TS05b also determines the subject's orientation, and pose, counting paces and even estimating which foot they are standing upon. It gathers the dynamics of transitions between poses to estimate the energy expended by the subject, or their impact in a fall, or collapse. It can track other tags in the vicinity, exploit that context data to make more informed guesses about the subject's activities. An early prototypeWe learned a great deal from this prototype, and have been busily working on a much better one, that affords a better interpretation of the data.
The hardware and software challenges to create the follow-on prototype - TS06 have been, and continue to be daunting. Important new goals are that TS06 should be inexpensive, and preferably free at the point of need; easy for a person of limited means to install and maintain over many years. Neither should it require the subject to re-charge it at every touch and turn. Perhaps most challenging is somehow avoiding the slow decline to a "worthless irritant", a fate that befalls so many personal sensing devices. |
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