2020 4th International Conference on Computer, Communication and Signal Processing (ICCCSP)
PERSONAL ASSISTANCE FOR
ALZHEIMER’S PATIENT
2020 4th International Conference on Computer, Communication and Signal Processing (ICCCSP) | 978-1-7281-6509-7/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICCCSP49186.2020.9315250
Kalpana Devi.S1, Amirthavarshini D2, Anbukani RS3, Bhavatha Ranjanni S4,
Assistant Professor1, UG Student2, UG Student3, UG Student4,
• Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Easwari Engineering
College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
kalpanasubramaniyan2010@gmail.com, amirthavarshini125@gmail.com, rsanbukani@gmail.com, bhavatharanjanni@gmail.com
Abstract— Alzheimer’s disease is a gradual brain disorder
and an irremediable disease that slowly destroys memory
and thinking skills. The contemporary solution for this
disease includes forums for discussion, behavioural
monitoring, and path sensing. The proposed solution is to
create an application that acts as personal assistance to the
patients. The features include face recognition, wandering
and fainting detection, assistance to find a way home,
reminders to daily chores and past life, organizing , and
planning jobs. This can be implemented by using the
sensors and GPS in smartphones to sense the actions of the
patients. Deep learning and machine learning using python
can be applied in android studio along with google maps.
The games in the application that are specifically designed
for the patient help them in the initial stage of the disease.
Memory is improved by learning and making the brain
engaged in some activity as it connects brain cells. The new
feature in the application is face recognition, where the patient
gets a reminder of persons they have met. This helps the
patient to overcome the difficulties in recognizing people.
Keywords- Dementia, machine learning, Alzheimer’s disease,
google maps.
I. INTRODUCTION
The personal assistance for Alzheimer’s patient
application predominantly comprises four modules namely:
Face recognition, Wander detection, Fall detection,
and Reminders. The application assists the patient to take
care of their activities and aids them by recollecting
memories. The application serves as assistance by
providing the patient’s regular activities in accordance with
the user’s requirement. The caretaker will have the
application and can access the application only if the
respective user allows access to the caregiver. The
methodologies used are GPS tracking system,
accelerometer, and gyroscope for fall detection. The
application is built using android studio. The objective of
the mobile application is to assist the patient on daily basis
and help them recognize persons they meet. This
application helps the caregiver to track the patient and
allows the caregiver to know the status of the patient if any
emergencies occur. The significance of the application
is Face recognition and Wander detection technologies
which have not been used in any of the Alzheimer’s
application that has been designed so far.
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II. LITERATURE SURVEY
Dr Arlene Astell [1] conducted research on
electronic tagging, smart technology, and interventions
to focus on improving communication between people with
dementia. A supportive relationship will be developed
between people with dementia and caregivers. It raises
several issues of depersonalization.
Dr.Bharucha [2] held an extensive search t h a t
analyses environmental sensors and cognitive devices. A
l ot of sensors, detectors have been compensating f o r
disabilities and enhanced physical and mental well-
being. But considerable training is required for some
devices to constructively know the user’s route.
Bantry&Paul [3] conducted research on electronic
tracking through GPS and a location device to track people
with dementia one who wanders. It makes people with
dementia feel more secure and solve such emergency
situations promptly. The privacy and data security concerns
lead to some issues.
The GPS tracking method researched by Sara Paiva
[4] suggests a low-cost tracking system of patients.
This method is useful for caregivers to keep track of
patients with healthcare professionals and data servers.
The conventional sensors used to detect fall includes
accelerometer and gyroscope. Among these sensors,
ArkhamZahriRakhman [5] tried to use the sensors in the
smartphone by having it in a shirt pocket on the left. But we
cannot make sure that the patients will keep their
smartphone in appropriate place.
HaiandTRAN [6] made an android application with the
help of an accelerometer to detect the fall. It uses multilayer
feed forward network and backpropagation algorithm
with a sigmoid activation function to analyse and
learn from accelerometer inputs. But the system
does not enable personalizing the learning objects and the
accuracy may vary.
Drew Dara Abram [7] describes cognitive surveying as
characterizing people’s spatial knowledge. It is used as a
tracking system using GPS to label landmarks. The
optimistic result is constructing a map and exploring an
unknown environment with accuracy using spatial
navigation.
Iimplemented, the user must know how to use
 2020 4th International Conference on Computer, Communication and Signal Processing (ICCCSP)

it properly, which also requires some more

techniques and methods [8].
. PROPOSED WORK
The patient can move out of their home once they get
pop up notification from the application. Then the GPS is
switched on automatically and monitors where the
patient moves. The wander detection algorithm helps
tracking on the path which the patient has chosen. If the
wander is detected, the location is sent to the caregiver.
Face recognition is used when the patient meets a new
person, scans their face, and enters the details of that
person. Fall detection alert is activated with the help of the
gyroscope and accelerometer. When the patient falls the
alert, message is immediately sent to the concerned
Fig.1. System architecture of the application
caregiver. The reminder system is used to send
notification to the patient for their daily activities. As soon
as the patient downloads the app, first, it asks for the
patient’s basic details & caregiver’s details. III. MODULE DESCRIPTION

With the required information given by the patient and

the caregiver, the application starts working. The regular
activities will be notified daily. Other than that, if the
patient wants to update any other events then it will give
a reminder. On a regular basis, the application notifies that
the phone belongs to that patient and verifies that the
patient is alright.
A. Fall Detection
Normal activity or an actual fall can be detected using the
system feature detection sensors (Accelerometer
and Gyroscope). The speed of the movements
will be measured continuously in all directions. The fall
detector can recognize how an actual fall differs from the
normal activity. If the input of Accelerometer and
Gyroscope readings are not normal and if the location of
GPS is t u r n e d off, then the alarm notification will be
sent to the caregiver that the patient is at the home. This is
because the GPS will be on only if the patient is out of the
home. If the location of GPS is turned

Fig.2. Functional architecture of the application

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 2020 4th International Conference on Computer, Communication and Signal Processing (ICCCSP)
on, the alarm notification with the live location of the patient
will be sent to the caregivers.
Fig.3. Working flowchart of fall detection module
B. Face Recognition
Fig.4. Working flowchart of face recognition module
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During stage 3 of mild decline, Alzheimer’s patients
tend to forget their relatives and friends. During this time
the face recognition helps to identify them. The real-time
face recognition uses the eigenfaces and fisher faces
method to recognize the faces.
The patient will input the relative’s and friend’s
photos initially for training. When the disease progresses,
the patient may forget them one by one. During that
time the face recognition helps to find them out. If
the patient doesn’t recognize someone, they can find
them through this application. Later when the patient
meets a new person and if they are willing, they can capture
the new person’s photos and train to recognize them.
C. Wander Detection
The GPS location of the patient can be monitored by
the caregiver lively. The patient tends to go out of the
house only when the reminder of visiting places comes. In
stage 5 of moderately severe decline , the patient may
forget the destination he/she is going or forget the way to
reach the destination even though it was a frequently visited
place.
When the patient loses his/her way more than a couple
of times, the patient gets a notification to check whether
the patient is wandering. If the patient gives acceptance for
the notification then the information is sent to the caregiver
along with the location details. The patient is also
informed about the destination location and the way to
reach there. In this way, the wander detection module
gives assistance when the patient is out of the house.
Fig.5. Algorithm of wander detection module
D. Reminder System
In the Reminder system, the patient may input their
daily work along with its description. The patient will fix
the time and date to remind their work. Then the
patient will be reminded about that work accordingly by
the notification. Once the work mentioned by the reminder
is completed, it will be marked as done. The work which is
marked as done is reminded to the patient hourly.
 2020 4th International Conference on Computer, Communication and Signal Processing (ICCCSP)

When a fall is detected, the patient is notified about

it with an alarm message. If the patient does not respond to
it, then an urgent notification is sent to the caregiver
along with the location of the patient. The outcome of
the module is to keep track of the patient and save the
patient in case of emergencies.

Fig.6. Algorithm of reminder system module
IV WORKING OF ASSISTANCE
SYSTEM
A. Fall Detection
The fall detection works with the help of
accelerometer and gyroscope sensors available on the
mobile. The input from the accelerometer and
gyroscope is constantly fed into the machine learning
algorithm. This is a threshold-based algorithm that
can be worked with TensorFlow, a machine learning
platform through which the training can be done. The
feature extraction is done for various activities such as
sitting, jumping, climbing up or down the stairs, falling
and sleeping on the bed. Then the peaks created by the
accelerometer and gyroscope reading are classified
according to these features. The multilayer feed forward
network with sigmoidal function as the activation
function is used to train the model [6]. When the patient
falls, the peak values noted by the sensors will be
detected as fall by the algorithm.
B. Face Recognition
The face recognition works with the help of the phone
camera. Initially, when the patient starts using the app,
he/she will input the photos of relatives, friends, and
neighbours.
The training of these data is done with machine
learning through OpenCV. Furthermore, inputs are also
trained with the algorithm. The fisher faces method is used
in face recognition [29]. In the feature extraction process, the
image pre-processing is done where the image is converted
in greyscale and image acquisition is done followed by the
image processing where the feature vector is matched with
the traits. Then feature generation is done by principal
component analysis and linear discriminant analysis
algorithms. Then the image is trained and tested for the
output.
When the patient forgets a person, he/she tends to find
them through this app. When the patient captures a photo of
that person, the output of the person’s name and details
appear. Through this module, the patient can feel
comfortable with his/her relatives, friends, and
neighbours as the patient could identify who the person is.

Fig.8. Screenshot output of face recognition module

C. Wander Detection

The wander detection system works with the

help of GPS tracking provided by google maps. The
Fig.7. Screenshot output of fall detection module
everyday routine of the patient is noted through the
reminder system and notification to go out of the house is
also given by this system. When the patient accepts this and

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 2020 4th International Conference on Computer, Communication and Signal Processing (ICCCSP)

entering ‘yes’ the location details and information about

the patient are sent to the caregiver. The patient is
guided with the route to reach the destination. The
outcome of this module is that the patient will not feel
reluctant to move out of house and the patient will feel
free to visit any places with this assistance.

Fig.11 Screenshot output of notification of reminder

in reminder module

The reminder system works based on the information

that is given by the patient and the caregiver. The
patient is asked to fill the daily routines once they
start using the application. The daily plans of the
patient are updated in the reminder system. This system
will remind the patient with the notifications to do the
assigned work. The reminder gets completed when the
patient acknowledges that he/she has done the work. The
reminder system will also ensure to keep reminding the
patient that he/she has done that work already.
VI. CONCLUSION

The application can be further improved by including

chatbots for keeping track of the patient regularly and
inform them about the medications to be taken on scheduled
Fig.9. Screenshot output of wander detection module days. This can be further developed in wearable devices
such as smartwatch and this can be expanded to further
platforms like iOS. Compared to the existing applications
that are related to Alzheimer’s disease, most of the
D. Reminder System applications are built around prioritizing games that could
help patients recollect their memory. Though there are
applications available to assists the patients, there do
not exist any applications that involve wander detection
and face recognition in any of the Alzheimer’s
applications. The shortcoming of the application is that it
doesn’t provide assistance for Alzheimer’s patients who has
reached the final stage of Alzheimer’s disease. But this
application will provide comfort and improve the lives of the
patients.

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