A context-aware reminder system for elders based on fuzzy linguistic approach

► To what extent people are sensitive or willing to response to the extraneous events. ► “If a set of conditions are satisfied, then a set of consequences can be produced.” ► Rule 8: If UL is “high” and IL is “medium” then RL is “high”. ► The similarity between user expectation level of reminder (UEL) and actual prompting level generated by the system (SPL). To date, several reminder systems for elders have been developed, but when and how to prompt the reminding message has not been fully explored yet. This paper presents a context-aware system that provides reminding messages for elders based on fuzzy linguistic model in order to properly deliver a reminder in an appropriate time and way. By separating the user activity contexts and contexts utilized to trigger a reminder, it is much easier for the elderly or their care givers to schedule and maintain reminders. We first adopt a fuzzy linguistic model to determine the prompting level based on the interrupt degree of user current activity and the urgent level of to-be-prompt reminder. An adaptive mapping strategy is then presented to transfer the prompting level into machine-readable parameters. Finally, the proposed approach is verified through our system prototype and experiments.