Detection of social interaction in smart spaces

The pervasive sensing technologies found in smart environments offer unprecedented opportunities for monitoring and assisting the individuals who live and work in these spaces. An aspect of daily life that is important for one's emotional and physical health is social interaction. In this paper we investigate the use of smart environment technologies to detect and analyze interactions in smart spaces. We introduce techniques for collecting and analyzing sensor information in smart environments to help in interpreting resident behavior patterns and determining when multiple residents are interacting. The effectiveness of our techniques is evaluated using two physical smart environment test beds.