A Complete Ambient Assisted Living eXperiment (CAALYX) in Second Life®
Concept, objectives and SL experience production:
Maged N. Kamel Boulos
LSL scripting of Sensors and WLD: Athanasios Anastasiou
- Download: Kamel Boulos MN, Anastasiou A. A Complete Ambient Assisted Living eXperiment (CAALYX) in Second Life®. In Proceedings of MedNet2008 - The 13th World Congress on the Internet in Medicine, 15-18 October 2008, St. Petersburg State I.P. Pavlov Medical University, Saint Petersburg, Russia (pp.4-5) - PowerPoint; Abstract
Obtaining the simulation
The following scripts have been produced in-world: ECG (electrocardiogram) Sensor,
RR (respiratory rate) Sensor, GPS (Global Positioning System) Sensor, and WLD
(Data Logger). They are available as a free ‘CAALYX Simulation (pre-alpha
concept release)’ package at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20UK/28/41/119
(see snapshot of the place below).
 <<
Click to enlarge.
Snapshot of
CAALYX’s
public mini-presence in SL, where visitors can obtain a free copy of
the simulation by touching the rotating ‘University of Plymouth’ globe.
The simulation package is delivered as a separate folder in user’s
Inventory in SL. |
After obtaining the free package in-world, the system should be tried in a
public sandbox (e.g.,
http://world.secondlife.com/place/363586f8-7406-ea8d-91f5-f9cca5594955) or
the user’s own land in SL where s/he is allowed to run scripts.
To obtain the outputs of these Sensors, the WLD must be worn by the user’s
avatar first. After the WLD is on, the order by which the subsequent Sensors are
put on does not matter. The user communicates with the WLD via the chat channel
using a set of simple commands explained in the information Notecard that comes
with the simulation package (see also ‘Usage instructions’ below). Results are currently returned to the local chat channel (i.e., as
text).
By running the simulation, users will see how Sensors and WLD pair and unpair
(corresponding to Bluetooth pairing that happens in the real system), how Sensor
readings change with the user’s avatar activity level in SL (heart and
respiratory rate readings respond to avatar’s movement) and location (the GPS
Sensor returns the avatar’s X, Y, Z location coordinates in SL, which also
change as the avatar moves), and how alarms (text notifications in the current
version) can be easily set and triggered when the corresponding
conditions/threshold triggers are fulfilled, e.g., when heart rate goes above a
certain value.
Usage instructions
Currently the commands are as follows:
- /help
Currently a placeholder for a piece of text explaining the available
commands to the user.
- /setalarm
Used to set a simple alarm. The user needs to know the name by which a
sensor publishes its result. Currently these are:
ECG: Publishes BPM (beats per minute).
RR: Publishes RR (respiratory rate).
GPS: Publishes GPS.X,GPS.Y,GPS.Z (in-world
latitude, longitude and altitude of the avatar wearing the script).
The command works in the following way:
/setalarm BPM:70
And currently assumes the number to be a threshold. Therefore
/setalarm BPM:70 means an alarm will be raised
when BPM goes above 70. BPM will rise to >70 while the avatar is walking or
running. (The '70' threshold is just an example to illustrate the usage of
the command and is a normal value in healthy older people — see also:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4736.)
Multiple alarms can be set by doing (example):
/setalarm BPM:70 RR:23 GPS.X:20 GPS.Y:50 GPS.Z:70
<<
Click to enlarge. Alarm triggered (text notification) once threshold is reached.
- /devices
Returns a listing of the devices currently attached to the avatar.
- /readinterval
Sets the period by which the WLD will scan the attached sensors for updates
of their values. For example:
/readinterval 4
Will set the interval between reads to 4 seconds.
Advanced (future) objectives
This is a very early version that can be developed further in due course,
time and resources permitting, and if there is enough interest to serve the
following purposes:
- More sophisticated modelling of the real system to better understand and
showcase the full range and sorts of communications taking place between the
different components of CAALYX;
- Demonstrating CAALYX functionality interactively to wider audiences
(novel dissemination) anywhere around the world (with a broadband
connection) and with negligible demonstration setup/preparations (the free
basic membership of SL is enough for this purpose);
- Testing/rehearsing various patient scenarios and interactive induction
and training of CAALYX personnel, maybe also using a more standardised ‘Medbiquitous
Virtual Patient’ approach (http://www.medbiq.org/working_groups/virtual_patient/),
currently used in the PREVIEW project (see ‘Related links’ below), in
addition to graphical colour HUDs (Heads-Up Displays, as used, for example,
in NESIM—see ‘Related links’ below) to reproduce the caretaker’s program
screens and the Nokia N95 interface in SL, and display on them the
observations and communications taking place, as well as use them to receive
user’s input, instead of relying on the text channel for the display of
Sensor readings and the input of user’s commands. Graphical HUDs have the
potential of making the whole system friendlier and more understandable by
someone not familiar with CAALYX and/or the corresponding simulation in SL,
which should also help fulfill purpose #2 above; and
- Modelling and investigating the real system’s bottlenecks and
scalability.
Related links
Back to Home Page
Linden, Linden Lab, Second Life, Second Life Grid, SL, SL Grid,
SLurl, and WindLight are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc.
<<
Click to enlarge.
<<
Click to enlarge. Alarm triggered (text notification) once threshold is reached.