Today, it is estimated that around 285 million people have some form of visual impairment (and that 82% of them are over the age of 50) among other possible types of functional disabilities. All of them involve a certain degree of dependence to perform everyday tasks.

Technology can provide assisted environments that improve people's quality of life, increasing their independence and their capacities in order to enable them to perform activities for longer.  

An article published in IEEE Intelligent Systems presents an empirical method to detect reliably and in real time, the interaction of a user with an object through radio frequency or RFID. The study was coordinated by Rafael Pous, with Raúl Parada as first author, both researchers at the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC), with the collaboration of Joan Melià, doctoral student of the UOC and now a post-doctoral researcher at UPF. This technology benefits both users and those who provide certain services and consumer products.

Radio Frequency identification is a wireless technology that allows the identification of certain objects. It consists of a reader, one or more electronic tags and a final information return system.

RFID technology is a good source of information for implementing intelligent systems with electronic tags. For example, it becomes a useful system to transform shop products into smart objects and this study opens the possibility for people with disabilities to be able to interact with objects in their everyday life thanks to a smart system without any devices, based on RFID technology, which improves the independence and experience of people with disabilities.

Reference work:

Raúl Parada, Joan Melià-Seguí, Marc Morenza-Cinos, Anna Carreras and Rafael Pous (2015), “Using RFID to Detect Interactions in Ambient Assisted Living Environments”, IEEE Intelligent Systems, July-August.