Working under the supervisian of Dr. Qiyin Fang at McMaster University, I worked on a small segment of the “smart home” project. The goal of this project is to bring a fully integrated assisted living setup into the home of our elderly with the goal to reduce the strain on our aging care system.

This project had many different facets to it such as integrating wearable devices, motion sensors, smart home sensors, and other various devices to assist in caring for elderly patients at home.

One of the devices that I got to work on was the tracking of residents through the home. This was a lot more complicated than just motion tracking due to the possibility of multiple inhabitants in the home. With this in mind it was determined that Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was the solution that we would explore.

This consisted of two parts, the base stations spread through the house, and wearable technology that would be used to uniquely identify the person, and locate them. Using the Recieved Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) it was theoretically possible to track the location of the resident.

Unfortunately due to the limited time of research positions, I was unable to see this project to the end but the research is ongoing to this day.