Ambient Assisted Control using Smart Luminaires
Iuliana Marin Ionuț Drăghici
Department of Engineering in Foreign Languages
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
marin.iulliana25@gmail.com
Nicolae Goga
Department of Engineering in Foreign Languages,
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Bucharest,
Romania
Molecular Dynamics Group, University of Groningen,
Groningen, Netherlands
n.goga@rug.nl
Abstract—The population aging, the need to reduce the cost of elderly
care, as well as to increase security and energy efficiency have led to the
emergence of many home monitoring systems. However, most of these
systems are expensive, are not standardized, are complicated to implement
(individualized wiring, wireless nodes) and can only be used with qualified
personnel. Our light bulb prototype aims to reduce such deficiencies as well
as remove the obstacles to adopting such systems by reducing costs and
simplifying installation. The proposed solution aims to capitalize on
existing electrical and lighting equipment, to set up a monitoring system
only by replacing the luminaires in the existing electrical system with other
lighting sources developed specifically for this purpose. Through the
periodic replacement process and based on the current trend in light-
emitting diode usage, these smart luminaires can be gradually introduced
to supervise the location within houses, mostly elders’ HOMES who live
alone.
Keywords—smart bulb; home monitoring; lighting equipment; person
location; Bluetooth
I. INTRODUCTION
The current article proposes an energy-efficient interior locating,
communication and lighting luminaires equipped with a built-in
electronic sensor system, allowing for continuous, ubiquitous and
inexpensive home monitoring. These luminaires will be fully
compatible with current technologies and, once installed, will
supervise the activity of the monitored persons. The main function
of the platform, connected to the bulbs, is to monitor users at home
where they carry out their daily activities and to continuously locate
that person.
Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
draghiciionutcatalin@yahoo.com
Ionel-Bujorel Păvăloiu
Department of Engineering in Foreign Languages
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
bujor.pavaloiu@upb.ro
Melania Nițu
Department of Engineering in Foreign Languages
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
melania.nitu@yahoo.com
Our project consists of a network of modular built-in bulbs
using Bluetooth technology and Raspberry Pi. The bulb network
has the role of providing location-related information to the
application server.
One of the main goals of the research is to support elderly
people living in their homes to help them carry out their daily and
independent activities safely. The system will ensure continuous
monitoring of these people, while respecting their dignity, privacy
and private information. Decisions taken by the system will always
to ensure people well-being and safety. Elderly persons will interact
with the system through the smart phones they have with them.
Through these devices, people can be permanently located and their
activities can be monitored.
The mobile phone of the monitored person is equipped with a
Bluetooth device. This device will communicate with smart
luminaires and the signals emitted by it will be processed at the
level of smart light bulbs that will apply internal positioning
algorithms to determine the location of the person. It is therefore
essential that the smart lighting network provide full coverage of
the home interior to allow continuous localization.
Every registered mobile device in the system will be available to
the people who want to interpret the measured data based on it.
Searches can be done using unique identifiers associated with the
Bluetooth devices with which the devices you are looking for are
equipped. Because location data will be stored on the server, it will be
easy enough to determine the location of a mobile phone associated
with a person.
 The caregivers for elderly person are usually made up of
people with a certain training (social workers, nurses), but this
kind of system users can also include relatives or friends who
are involved in the care of the elderly.
The persons who are part of the care staff have access to
the location data of the monitored person. If the application is
regularly consulted and the person being monitored is in a
room where it should not spend a long time at a particular
time of day, then the care staff can act appropriately in a
timely manner to prevent accidents.
In the current paper is presented the electronic light device
along with its functionality of monitoring persons. The article
is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the relevant
background theory about indoor positioning and localization
algorithms. The next section outlines the description of the
monitoring light bulb components and of the localization
solution. Section 4 presents the obtained results. The last
section summarizes the conclusions.
II. INDOOR POSITIONING AND LOCALIZATION
A. Indoor Positioning
Indoor positioning is a field of research that draws a lot of
attention at present. This technology can be embedded in a
wide range of consumer electronics products. For example, in
the case of inland navigation, indoor positioning technology
can be used in portable products to provide location
identification and guide users in museums [1] or large-scale
shops [2].
Another possible applicability is the location of products
in large warehouses where positioning can automate inventory
management processes [3]. It can also be used for ads or
personalized services by location [4].
Fast Global Positioning System (GPS) positioning is hard
to do because the GPS signals are absorbed by the walls of
large buildings [5]. To solve this problem there are two
different approaches: radio frequency (RF) techniques or
VLC-based communication techniques.
B. Localization Algorithms
There are different positioning algorithms that have been
proposed in the literature and can be broadly divided into
three categories: triangulation, scene analysis and proximity.
Triangulation is the general name of the positioning
technique that uses the geometric properties of the triangles to
estimate the location and is composed of two branches: lateral
and angular [6].
The lateration, also known as trilateration, approximates
the location of the monitored object by measuring distances to
several reference points.
In VLC techniques, the references are light sources and
the target is the receiver. The distance is given indirectly by
measuring the received signal strength (RSS), time of arrival
(TOA) or time difference of arrival (TDOA) [7].
TOA methods need a complete synchronization between
transmitter and receiver clocks. They have not been used in
VLC techniques, but are involved in the usage of GPS. For
TDOA, synchronization is only required between transmitters
[7].
Angulation measures relative angles to multiple reference
points by using the angle of arrival (AOA) [7]. Estimation of
the location is done by finding the intersection.
The wide availability of smart phones or tablets make it
possible to use this method on ordinary electronic devices.
Due to the narrow field of view (FoV) of the cameras, a
good illumination grid is needed to achieve performance, else
the system can only be used in very high rooms. For RF
techniques, most receivers do not capture the reception angle.
Scene analysis refers to a group of positioning algorithms
that compare measured information with a previous
measurement database. All TOA, TDOA, RSS, and AOA can
be used to collect data [8].
The proximity method is very simple, based on a network
of reference points, each of which has a known position.
When the target collects the signal from a single source, it is
considered co-located with the source, if there are several
sources, it is averaged. Accuracy is no bigger than the
network resolution, where each room has a monitoring bulb
and the distance between the bulbs is of maximum 6 meters
for a better positioning of the smartphone [7].
III. OUR MONITORING SYSTEM
A. General Description of the System
The indoor monitoring system proposed in this research is
based on a network of monitoring blubs where each of them
has Bluetooth for attaining a wide area of coverage. Figure 1
illustrates the architecture of the system.
Fig. 1. System Architecture
Depending on the size of the house or public building,
more than three monitoring bulbs will be deployed. The
monitoring bulbs create a Bluetooth mesh for communication.
The person to be monitored or a caregiver (in the case of
elderly people or any other disabled person) enters the
Android application, creates his/her own account on the
application server and associates the monitoring bulbs to his
account.
 The person creates and uploads the map of the house, header and it also provides voltage regulation and level
where the dimensions or the rooms are known. shifting as in Fig. 3.
The positions of the monitoring bulbs are determined by
the person on the map using trilateration. The monitored
person can also associate other smartphones which can access
the information about him/her.
The signal of the Bluetooth is used to position the desired
smartphones. The captured Bluetooth signals are processed by
the smartphone and the positioning algorithms are run within
the mobile application in order to establish the position of the
monitored smartphone.
The data is sent to the application server which exposes a Fig. 3. Bluetooth Mate Silver
web interface for customizing the map and for visualizing it.
Based on the new coordinates, the position of the monitored Bluetooth is a standard for short range wireless
person is updated on the map. The associated smartphones can communications technologies [11] dedicated to data transfer,
visualize the position of the monitored person. especially suitable for point-to-point connections.
B. Hardware Components The overall hardware components including the Arduino
Pro Mini and the Bluetooth Mate Silver are shown in Fig. 4.
The monitoring bulb is composed of an Arduino Mini Pro
328 of 5V/16 MHz, a Bluetooth Mate Silver for Arduino, a
plexiglass tube, and a light-emitting diode (LED) band.
The Arduino Mini Pro 328 of 5V which is illustrated in
Fig. 2 is a microcontroller from the SparkFun Electronics
company runs on a 16Mhz bootloader.

Fig. 4. Monitoring bulb hardware components

The hardware components are placed inside the plexiglass

tube where a LED band is place to illuminate the room, after
having the bulb connected to the power supply (see Fig. 5).

Fig. 2. Arduino Mini Pro 328

The Arduino microcontroller appeared in 2005 and was

designed to offer a cheap and easy solution for inexperienced
and less skilled persons to create devices which interact with
their environment using sensors and actuators [9].
Fig. 5. Monitoring bulb
This microcontroller has an Arduino development board
and it has its own integrated development environment
(Arduino IDE) where code can be written in the C or C++ C. Localization components
programming language The signaling and reception module has been deployed in
The Arduino Mini Pro version was used due to its small Android to monitor the position of a person / device that
dimensions because it had to fit inside the plexiglass tube. holds the phone in a room where there are three monitoring
light bulbs with an Arduino Mini Pro, to which it is attached
The Bluetooth Mate Silver has a Bluetooth transceiver on the Bluetooth Mate Silver to make the connection between
it, being able to send and receive data. Without using any the bulb and the phone.
wires, it can be found at a distance of up to 100 meters away
[10]. The pins of Bluetooth module are plugged into the serial The distance between the mobile phone and the light bulb
header of the Arduino Pro Mini. is calculated based on the RSSI signal strength (Received
Signal Strength Indicator) and the Bluetooth connection.
The Bluetooth Mate Silver is composed of an antenna, a
Bluetooth module, a connection and status LED, an interface
 The MAC address of each sensor is known. The size of the
person's room and the positions where the three bulbs are
located are marked with a red circle on the camera map.
The person's mobile phone coordinates (x, y, z) are
calculated using trilateration according to the three bulbs. For
each bulb at the coordinates (xb, yb, zb) we obtain three
equations:
, where d is the distance between the patient and the bulb,
given by the formulae [12]:
, where n is the signal attenuation constant, A is the value of
the RSSI signal when the Bluetooth source is 1 meter away.
The coordinates of the person based on the personal
mobile phone are found based on the distance that is
computed for each of the three bulbs (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6. Computation of the person coordinates
The relations get squared and the subtraction between
equation 1 and equation 2 is done, as well as the subtraction
between equation 2 and equation 3. This leads to a system of
two equations with two unknowns which is solved using
Cramer's rule, and the patient's position is marked by a blue
circle on the map of the mobile application.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
For testing purposes it has been considered a classroom
where its dimensions are known. The red points represent the
position of the 3 monitoring light bulbs which were used.
The coordinates, as well as the MAC addresses of the light
bulbs are known. The blue point represents the position of the
person to be monitored. The coordinates of the persons
resulted after computing it using trilateration (see Fig. 7).
Fig. 7. Placement of the monitoring light bulbs
The detection process repeats itself at an interval of 15
seconds and the coordinate of the person is updated on the
map
The Android application (see Fig. 8) offers the possibility
to turn on and off the mobile phone's Bluetooth, it can search
for new Bluetooth devices with which it can get paired.
The devices with which it got paired are also displayed.
The application does the positioning, having as target in this
case a room and it searcher for Bluetooth devices. For each
device it comes the RSSI value and determined the position of
the monitored device which is displayed on the map.
Fig. 8. Placement of the nodes
The application uses two libraries for real-time scanning,
respectively android.bluetooth.BluetoothDevice and
android.bluetooth.BluetoothAdapter. The Bluetooth Device
and Bluetooth Adapter Libraries assist for the operations
which consist in displaying the nearby devices, connecting to
other devices through the discovery function and scanning
nearby devices.
The whole code has been written in Java for Android,
using the Bluetooth characteristics of the mobile phone and
the information offered by the www.developer.android.com
website. The application was tested on a HTC Desire 500
mobile phone.
Based on the current simulation the position of the
monitored device has a position determined with 89%
accuracy, because the RSSI measurement includes the signal
part, as well as the noise. This accuracy is based on a
tolerance of 0.5 - 1.5 meters. We have considered an average
over many samples in order to remove the noise and to
calibrate the results.
 V. CONCLUSIONS
Today's generation have the tendency to leave alone at
their home and due to the need to take care of our dear ones
while being at work or abroad becomes a daily task. Our
monitoring light bulb allows someone's relatives or caregivers
to observe the desired person position, as well as to provide
intimacy and support for the monitored person.
Variations occurred for the RSSI reading, such that an
average value of the measurements was used to estimate the
distances and position. The RSSI measurement included also
the noise which had to be eliminated.
RSSI value changes due to the propagation on multiple
paths when the signal goes through walls or floors. The
signals are attenuated based on the type and thickness of the
building's materials.
The results show that Bluetooth can be involved for indoor
localization. The future directions of the research are to
monitor attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
children who sometimes remain alone at home and the
Android application can provide them an educational part
regarding notions about Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and
even small games or riddles if the user does not interact after
a while with the application.
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