Few might see the connection between table tennis and care of the sick and elderly. Yet a new collaborative research project will see the lightning movements of a tabletennis bat used to develop sensory technology which could help patient care.
The National Microelectronics Research Centre (NMRC) in Cork and the Computer Science Department at Trinity College Dublin have received £400,000 to develop "context aware" mobility detection systems.
The NMRC will develop a motion-tracking sensor which will be used in devices to follow the movements of people. Trinity College will develop software applications to complement this hardware.
The reasoning behind inserting the sensor in a table-tennis bat is that the movements of the bat are high speed. If the sensors are good enough to track the bat's rapid movement then they should be able to track people.
Applications for the sensor/software combination include monitoring elderly people living alone. The sensor could be used to track their movements and alert relatives or friends if the person has a fall or accident and is not moving for a time.
Sensors could also be used on fridges or ovens so that if key appliances have not been used for some time a warning would be given. The NMRC team is developing a matrix of sensors that can read the surrounding environment, explained the NMRC's Dr Kieran Delaney.
The project will reformat a range of different acoustic, pressure and motion sensors to track the movement of the table-tennis bat, ball and player. Sensors will be embedded in the handle and head of the bat, the table and net and will track the players feet and hand movements, he said.
The plan is to miniaturise the sensors so that they will be invisible to the user. "The bottom line is that if the player notices the sensors as he plays the system is not working," he said.
The NMRC will apply its expertise on high-density interconnection technology and miniaturisation. The scientists will then compare their sensor data to a video of the table-tennis player to assess tracking accuracy. The technology has a surprisingly wide range of applications. It could be used to turn on room heating automatically if a person enters and the temperature is not up to a comfortable level. It could be useful in reducing the risk of house fires, with sensors that turn off all appliances once the person leaves the room.
The sensor matrix can note a person's direction and speed and will measure the surrounding temperature, sounds and pressure. This might be a help for people with hearing problems. If they enter a room and turn on the TV the system would automatically move the volume up to the required level. Dr Simon Dobson at Trinity College said the research team wants to develop technology that reacts to situations based on the sensors pinpointing a person's location.
There are obvious privacy issues, he said, but these concerns would be addressed from the start. People using these sensor systems would be able to turn them off if they so wished. "It does not have to be an invasive technology and the last thing we want to generate is a Big Brother," Dr Dobson said.
Parents trying to monitor toddlers wandering off could use this motion and location system to detect the child's whereabouts even when around the corner and out of sight. There are also medical and hospital applications. A sensor attached to a hospital drug trolley could "read" its location when entering a ward. It could then automatically list patients and their prescriptions on screen for the attending nurses. As the nurse approached each bed she could also be given extra patient information.