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Future Scenarios Envisioned by RICOH360 Vol. 1: Creating a Future without Walls
This series features future scenarios envisioned by RICOH360.
It features how technology that records and analyzes the entire 360 degrees range can contribute to society and the lives of people, and what kind of world will be achieved as a result of this technology.
This scenario was created during a workshop by next generation leaders who will examine the value of RICOH360 and its ideal situation.
This article is illustrated with actual workshop materials.
Amid a world full of grim news such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and an inflationary economy. In the midst of all this, we have been thinking about the super-aging society.
A familiar house to which the elderly are attached is an irreplaceable thing.
However, it appears that dangers lurk here and there in such houses.
Our homes, where we expect to be perfectly safe, are a treasure trove of danger when viewed by experts, in terms of the toilet and bathroom, which are areas we use on a daily basis without really thinking about it.
If we could reduce these dangers even just by a little...
We want to analyze homes, eliminate the barriers referred to as dangers here, and create a people-friendly home so that people can continue to live there. That’s right, we want to provide proposals from our field of expertise, the 360 world.
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Renovation Assistance Service
According to the “Annual Report on the Aging Society,” the number of the elderly who require assistance or nursing care is 6.68 million and 77% of elderly-involved accidents occur at home. This means that over 5 million people live their lives each day with the risk of injury because of an accident. The percentage of the elderly who want to continue to live in their own home is high at 59%.
Renovation is a possible means of allowing the elderly to continue living at home and also minimizing the risk of an accident occurring but renovation can burden an individual with significant costs. However, there is a program that pays 200 thousand yen as a renovation subsidy for people who require assistance or nursing care.
This allows us to set up a budget.
But will this type of unusual renovation work?
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People of all ages, not just the elderly, are often anxious and unsure about many aspects of renovation for which they are unfamiliar.
When renovating the homes of people who require assistance or nursing care, we can imagine that first of all there are “family members” who are the customer, and “architects” and “building contractors” who perform the actual renovation work. Additionally, there are also “occupational therapists and physical therapists (OT/PT)” who will review and provide instructions for the renovation work so that it is appropriate for nursing care. This will likely involve a great deal of work just to share information.
Is it possible for all of these people to share the same information and remain consistent to finally complete the renovation work?
We had a hunch that 360 would prove to be useful for this challenge and this led to the proposal shown below.
Hypothesis to a Solution
Let’s hypothesize that an unfamiliar renovation can be conducted smoothly if we build the following functions into RICOH360, which is a platform that provides a variety of services with 360-degree images.
1. 3D room restoration
Shooting 360-degree images of the inside of a home in its current state and using 3D restoration enables us to view the inside of a room in three dimensions. 3D restoration images are shared via a mobile app so this makes it easier for everyone involved in the renovation to notice the presence of barriers in a room, and allows everyone to easily have a mutual understanding on what is required.
2. Floor plan generation
Unlike a newly built house, a home that has been lived in for many years does not often have a floor plan available, but such a floor plan is required when renovating the property. Automatically generating this floor plan from 360-degree images and sharing it allows us to study how people receiving nursing care move around their house and architects can use this as a reference for creating their own floor plans.
3. Automatic barrier detection
Barriers are discovered visually by people by looking at images with 3D room restoration (the function 1 above) but the use of image recognition technology will also make it possible to automatically detect concealed barriers. This will reduce the amount of work for OT and PT, and allows more comfortable renovation to be done efficiently.
4. Mobile app
All of the proposed functions will be packaged into a RICOH360 mobile or web-based app to allow people involved in the renovation to message each other using a text chat and share a deeper awareness of the work.
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Hypothesis Feasibility and Results
We have provided a variety of proposals but these functions do not currently exist at RICOH360.
However, individual functions do exist in the world and it will be a display of our skill as to how we can make full use of these functions or how we can form an alliance with professional contractors.
As a result, we can reduce the cost of medical fees, including the percentage paid by the national medical system for such fees, by reducing accidents in the home after completing renovations in a smooth manner, which is greater than the effect of reducing the anticipated work and time involved in sharing information. Moreover, by making it easier for everyone to use, we can also support socially vulnerable groups and come one step closer to the ideals of SDGs.
To create a future without walls we have come to understand that there are many barriers that we must overcome.
At the same time, this was a study that reminded us of RICOH360’s potential.
Author: Kakashi (pen name)
This article featured ideas discussed in a forward looking manner and asked the question “How can RICOH360 contribute to society?”
We will continue to develop RICOH360 as a brand that contributes to society and the future.
REFERENCES
Research on Planning Methods for Barrier-Free Retrofitting of Houses for the Elderly, etc.
http://www.nilim.go.jp/lab/bcg/siryou/tnn/tnn0825.htm
Current situation and changes in the social environment surrounding the housing and remodeling industry
https://www.meti.go.jp/committee/kenkyukai/seisan/reform/pdf/005_03_02.pdf
60% of remodeling units are by seniors 65 years and older
https://nspc.jp/senior/archives/10420/
community-based comprehensive care system
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/hukushi_kaigo/kaigo_koureisha/chiiki-houkatsu/
Welfare Equipment and Home Improvement
Long-Term Care Insurance Business Status Report
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/topics/kaigo/toukei/joukyou.html
White Paper on Aging Society
https://www8.cao.go.jp/kourei/whitepaper/index-w.html
Actual conditions and effects of home modification to promote home living for elderly people who need nursing care.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/aija/72/622/72_KJ00004786864/_article/-char/ja/
Indoor 3D restoration
- Zou, Chuhang, et al. "Manhattan Room Layout Reconstruction from a Single 360°Image: A Comparative Study of State-of-the-Art Methods." International Journal of Computer Vision 129.5 (2021): 1410-1431.
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