Paul Watson, Professor of Computing Science & Director of the Digital Institute
Imagine a kitchen where most of the fittings and utensils – the fridge, oven, kettle, pans, carving knives and even the floor – are fitted with sensors that can monitor your every move.
As you are cooking a meal the sensors detect that you have forgotten to carry out an important step, and you are prompted on what to do next by a wall mounted monitor screen.
Every move you make, from opening the fridge door to collect ingredients, to turning on the oven to start cooking, is tracked. That describes the Ambient Kitchen.
SiDE (Social Inclusion in the Digital Economy) programme
The Ambient Kitchen has been developed by digital scientists and engineers at Newcastle University as part of the SiDE (Social Inclusion in the Digital Economy) programme.
"Older people want to live in their homes for as long as possible," says the University’s Professor of Computing Science, Paul Watson, who leads the programme. "But if you have someone with the early stages of dementia living on their own, when they start to have memory problems it eventually gets to the point where they can’t do all the basic things they need to remain in their home safely.
"The question is, could you use digital technology to try to allow people to stay in their homes for as long as possible?"
The Ambient Kitchen is one solution. It has been created as part of a multi-disciplinary SiDE research project that is devising assistive technologies that could help people with age related conditions such as dementia or Parkinson’s Disease.
Professor Watson’s research team has also developed sensors with accelerometers that can be installed in a type of wristwatch. This collects data about the amount of exercise people are taking and when this is being done.
Structured exercise has been proven to inhibit the onset of certain conditions of old age. So data from the watch sensors can be downloaded into a computer and analysed, to work out whether people are taking the right kind of exercise.
Digital Institute
Professor Watson, who is Director of the University’s Digital Institute, points out: "It is an example of using digital technologies to help understand people’s activity in a fairly unobtrusive way" The Institute has been designated as one of three Digital Economy Hubs in the UK.
SiDE is funded through the Digital Economy Programme, led by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which also involves the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Newcastle University has received £12.5m through SiDE and its projects involve scientific and medical researchers and technical specialists from a wide range of academic disciplines.
"One of the good things is, I might have thought when I started that maybe attracting bright young researchers to a programme related to older people would have been difficult," says Professor Watson.
"But actually they are fascinated by it and really want to work on it. One reason is they have grandparents and see the problems of old age cropping up."
Huge opportunities for business
SiDE is a five year programme, but the challenges it is tackling will long outlast that. So Professor Watson’s ambition is to create a centre of excellence at the University which will attract other projects.
One of the challenges with the technology in the Ambient Kitchen is to adapt elements of it that could be scaled up commercially and turned into products that could be used in millions of homes in the UK and around the world.
For example, the wall monitor could be programmed to display recipes for meals and an instructional video, with sensors in utensils providing feedback. There are huge potential opportunities for businesses that could emerge from other aspects of the research.
"We do a lot of work on cars, trying to understand what it is that causes older people problems with driving. Then you start to think about tools and devices you can put in a car to help them, which could also benefit lots of other people," explained Professor Watson.
"It’s absolutely fascinating. What we try to do is to take cutting edge digital technologies and apply them in directions that typically technology companies don’t do."
Contact Paul Watson about his research.
Find out more about:
Read more about helping healthy ageing.
