Abstracts

Abstract Memory based illnesses, such as dementia, is a growing subject amongst the aging population. In order to improve the health care of the senior citizens, the University of Oulu has taken radical steps in the research for new technologies in the field. University of Oulu research has developed a telepresence-based monitoring system for elderly persons called Old Birds. The research done in this thesis concentrates in the virtualization of the caregivers interface, using client-server communication, calendar handling and time-simulation in order to handle senior citizens events, in order to validate the timing and coordination aspects. To tie the time-simulation to the movement of the senior citizens, this research continues the Old Birds project, and movement trajectory editing was developed further by refining waypoint system to be continuous and randomized. The artifact is constructed mostly by using techniques in Unity game engine, PHP scripting and SQL coding accordingly. In order to validate the research, a template scenario was created, that included all the created features, added to the Old Birds environment. The template scenario consisted of a bus trip from Oulu to Muhos. The technologies introduced in the scenario were the waypoint system, time simulation, point of interest stop points including the UI elements, a scene with a map and the calendar system. The template scenario was used by Carita Partanen, who successfully created a validation scenario, as part of one of the three validation scenarios in her own thesis, Community-level Social Activation of Elderly People Supported by ICT.