Monitoring Dressing Autonomy: A Remote Home Care RFID-Based Solution for People with Dementia

The number of elder people with dementia is steadily increasing, and so is the need for solutions to support remote home care and to facilitate “aging in place”. People affected by dementia often need assistance with daily self-care tasks such as dressing, eating, and bathing. Our focus is on the dressing activity: we analyze the requirements and propose a system that leverages RFID-based technology to support individuals in dressing appropriately, let the individuals reside at home or in assisted living facilities. The system exploits RFID tags, fixed or ironed onto the person’s clothes, and antennas to read and collect data from the tags. The system detects the user’s outfit, eventually providing the individual with immediate feedback and alerting the caregiver. We compare two different RFID technologies: one operating at 13.56 MHz (HF)—commonly adopted in the literature—and one at 868 MHz (UHF). An in-depth analysis of the RFID technology for detecting worn clothes is reported, considering the scenario where the antennas are positioned on one side of a door to achieve comprehensive detection coverage of the entire body.