Rule-Based Inquiry Service to Elderly at Home for Efficient Mind Sensing

Abstract

To support in-home long-term care, we are studying techniques of Mind Sensing, which externalizes internal states of elderly people as words through conversations with agents or robots. We have previously developed a prototype system of Mind Sensing, integrated with an activity recognition system and an LINE chatbot. However, the system was tightly coupled with the fixed systems, it was difficult to add or change the setting of questions from the chatbot to individual elderly people. In this paper, we propose the Mind Sensing Service, which allows a service operator to define and manage the questions flexibly, and to automate the delivery of the questions and the collection of the answers. The proposed service consist of two elements: actions and rules. An action defines the contents of specific questions such as what message is sent to which elderly people. A rule defines the conditions on when, where, and by what event, in order to execute the action. The proposed service makes it possible to implement more systematic and flexible Mind Sensing.