Hardware For Stingray To Detect Person Falling On Floor
BobCochran
Posts: 8
Hi, I am thinking of buying the Stingray robot. I would like it to be able to listen for specific sounds such as: A person falling, or a specific person saying a specific word. I would like it to then move close to that person in response to the falling sound or the voiced word from that person. It should not respond to the same word spoken by others who might be in the vicinity. What additional hardware would I need to get the bot to do this much? Thanks! --Bob
Post Edited (BobCochran) : 12/6/2009 2:12:17 AM GMT
Post Edited (BobCochran) : 12/6/2009 2:12:17 AM GMT
Comments
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- Stephen
It's one thing to want to experiment with the concept and to make a crude prototype that sort of demonstrates under ideal conditions some of the ideas that you'd need for a real system. It's another thing to expect that you'd be able to actually build a practical system.
I'd break the bigger project into many small pieces, addressing them one at a time. Some of the challenges you identified such as speech recognition (from a particular person) are way beyond anything I've seen done, at least with our microcontrollers. I notice that MSFT has some speaker-independent speech recognition built into their applications; maybe you need to throw a whole PC at the project for that part of the project.
Ken Gracey
Leon
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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
What if instead you had sort of an "opt-out" system, in which your mother had to check in regularly, and if she failed to do so in a certain period of time, then the messages were sent? Checking in could be simply a matter of touching an RFID tag to a reader once in a while. Augment it with that small radio remote that Mike mentioned, so that she can signal an emergency immediately, and you've got most of the functionality you're asking for, and you could have it in a matter of weeks rather than two or three years from now.
Frankly, a robot - an actual moving device·like the Stingray - doesn't seem to me to offer any advantage, and it would require a LOT of tinkering (read: time and $) to make it even moderately reliable.
Of course if the idea is to have some fun working with a Stingray, go for it.
-Phil
Post Edited (BobCochran) : 12/7/2009 10:52:47 PM GMT
In these cases, having an around-the-neck pendant of some description would be a good way to 'kick-off' the process.
You really want some way to reduce "false positivies", where your system concludes the person is in trouble when in fact they're not. Emergency Personnel just hate responding to emergency requests when there's no emergency.
Build some sort of device that the user wears, for example a pendant as Allan suggests or a bracelet, belt whatever. It just can't be intrusive or awkward to wear. I would then install an accelerometer on it, and you could even install a heart rate monitor www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8660 (I am not sure if this one could be used, there is an interface device you can get for it as well). I would then have all of this controlled by a propeller chip and have one button on the outside of the device. If the person falls or any of the sensors detect something that you specify to mean a potential emergency the device would beep quite loudly and flash an LED. The wearer then has 10 seconds to press the exterior button otherwise it assumes it is an emergency. You could also have it so that the person could press and hold the button at any time in order to set off the same response.
From here I would have the device send out some sort of signal, probably to a computer to send out the emergency protocol to wherever it needs to go. If you still think a robot is necessary consider having the device send out incredibly intense IR light to act like a beacon so the robot can find the persons location quite accurately.
Good Luck!