How much you can supervise children during housework
Mikiko Oono; Keigo Inamura; Yoshifumi Nishida; Tatsuhiro Yamanaka•Injury Prevention
Background The World Health Organization stated that the effectiveness of child supervision is scientifically limited to prevent injury, and it will be affected by many factors such as the caregiver’s level of being distracted, the caregiver’s mental health status, and use of medications. In this study, we focused on supervision during housework to clarify how much of the time the supervisor can supervise while doing a particular housework.
Methods We developed the evaluation system to measure how much the supervisor watched a child. We uses RGBD camera (Microsoft Kinect) and eye tracking glasses (Pupil Labs Pupil Invisible). In this system, we use point cloud data measured by a RGB-D camera to construct a 3D model of a living space. Then, we integrate eye tracking data from the glasses and posture data from a RGB-D camera to examine the level of child supervision. In this study, we asked participants to do daily housework including cooking, ironing, watching TV, and using a smartphone.
Results Two parents participated in this study. The result showed that a child was in effective visual field during 30 to 45% of the experiment time at most while ironing and watching TV, but only 15% at most while cooking and using a smartphone. The level of supervision is affected by the types of housework, the positions of a supervisor and a child, and home layouts.
Conclusion Our developed system allows us to measure how much the supervisor can at least watch a child during housework. The definition of supervision is still under discussion, but we believe that this system can be used to educate the supervisors on the importance of passive approach to protect children from harm.
Acknowledgement: This research is based on results obtained from a project, JPNP20006, commissioned by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)