Visualization of Body Supporting Force Field of the Elderly in Everyday Environment

In the centenarian era, we need a society where people can live safely and independently, despite life functions changing as the life stages progress. Changes in life functions with age make older people more prone to indoor falls. Thus, product and environment design that enables older people with significant changes in life functions to live safely in an indoor environment is an urgent issue. The purpose of this study is to develop a system that enables visualization of body supporting force and location in everyday living spaces. The proposed visualization system consists of RGB-D cameras and a wearable force sensor. The system validation experiment was conducted in a laboratory and five rooms at the houses of two subjects (75-year-old female and 84-year-old male). Experimental results show that the developed system is useful in visualizing body supporting when obtaining force behavior of holding nearby objects when performing actions like standing up from a sitting posture, getting up from a lying down posture, and so on.