scholarly journals Real-Time Action Recognition System for Elderly People Using Stereo Depth Camera

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (17) ◽  
pp. 5895
Author(s):  
Thi Thi Zin ◽  
Ye Htet ◽  
Yuya Akagi ◽  
Hiroki Tamura ◽  
Kazuhiro Kondo ◽  
...  

Smart technologies are necessary for ambient assisted living (AAL) to help family members, caregivers, and health-care professionals in providing care for elderly people independently. Among these technologies, the current work is proposed as a computer vision-based solution that can monitor the elderly by recognizing actions using a stereo depth camera. In this work, we introduce a system that fuses together feature extraction methods from previous works in a novel combination of action recognition. Using depth frame sequences provided by the depth camera, the system localizes people by extracting different regions of interest (ROI) from UV-disparity maps. As for feature vectors, the spatial-temporal features of two action representation maps (depth motion appearance (DMA) and depth motion history (DMH) with a histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) descriptor) are used in combination with the distance-based features, and fused together with the automatic rounding method for action recognition of continuous long frame sequences. The experimental results are tested using random frame sequences from a dataset that was collected at an elder care center, demonstrating that the proposed system can detect various actions in real-time with reasonable recognition rates, regardless of the length of the image sequences.

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandros Andre Chaaraoui ◽  
Francisco Flórez-Revuelta

This paper presents a novel silhouette-based feature for vision-based human action recognition, which relies on the contour of the silhouette and a radial scheme. Its low-dimensionality and ease of extraction result in an outstanding proficiency for real-time scenarios. This feature is used in a learning algorithm that by means of model fusion of multiple camera streams builds a bag of key poses, which serves as a dictionary of known poses and allows converting the training sequences into sequences of key poses. These are used in order to perform action recognition by means of a sequence matching algorithm. Experimentation on three different datasets returns high and stable recognition rates. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the highest results so far on the MuHAVi-MAS dataset. Real-time suitability is given, since the method easily performs above video frequency. Therefore, the related requirements that applications as ambient-assisted living services impose are successfully fulfilled.


2000 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
pp. 254-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Kinn ◽  
Linda Galloway

Falling is a major problem for the elderly population and much research has been done to investigate the risk factors for and means of preventing falls. However, very little research has been carried out looking at if and how therapists teach elderly people how to rise after a fall. This postal survey was undertaken to investigate whether therapists do anything to try to prevent falls, assess elderly people for suitability and teach them how to rise after a fall. The results showed that almost all the respondents (127 of 137) identified falling as a problem that they had to deal with in their patients over 65 years. The main focus of occupational therapists was to prevent falls by making environmental changes (for example, removing hazards) whereas physiotherapists were involved in physical changes (for example, balance training). Over half the respondents had considered teaching people how to rise after a fall. A range of different methods was used, which broadly fell into physical and verbal instructions or referral to other health care professionals. The sources of knowledge for teaching how to rise after a fall came mainly from previous clinical experience. Falls are an acknowledged problem in the elderly population and among these hospital and community based therapists about half had considered teaching or had taught elderly people how to rise after a fall.


Author(s):  
Luis M. Camarinha-Matos ◽  
Filipa Ferrada

An important application context for virtual communities is elderly care. One of the key challenges facing modern societies is the increasing speed at which the population is aging. In Europe, for example, during the last three decades the number of people aged 60 years or more has risen by about 50%. Traditional approaches to care provision are based on support from either the relatives or the elderly care centers. Nevertheless, these two solutions have become increasingly insufficient due to (1) the impractical responsibility onto relatives¾given the fact that more and more family members have to work to secure steady incomes; (2) the costs of providing sufficient care centers, which leads to a relocation of the elderly people, often beyond their home communities; and (3) the fact that many elderly people preserve enough robustness to be in their homes, a situation that is often preferable to them, and as such, better for their welfare (Castolo, Ferrada, & Camarinha-Matos, 2004). This will inevitably place a considerable strain on resources and finances. To deal with this challenge, new ways of providing elderly assistance and care must be found, including the creation of a new technological infrastructure. An integrated elderly care system comprises a number of organizations, such as social security institutions, care centers/day centers, health care institutions and so forth, and involves the cooperation of a number of different human actors; for example, social care assistants, health care professionals, the elderly people and their relatives. If supported by computer networks and adequate assistance tools, such systems may evolve towards operating as a long-term virtual organization, and the various involved actors become part of a virtual community. Furthermore, virtual communities can bring the sense of community and of recognition, respect and belonging, which gives the elderly a strong feeling of usefulness along with better support for their own needs. In this context, the IST TeleCARE project (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2002, 2004) was launched with the aim of designing and developing a configurable framework, based on mobile (software) agents, focused on the establishment of virtual communities for elderly support. In this article, the TeleCARE Time Bank virtual community concept is presented and the developed supporting infrastructure is discussed.


Author(s):  
Panagiotis D. Bamidis ◽  
Evdokimos Konstantinidis ◽  
Antonis S. Billis ◽  
Anastasios Sioundas

Population ageing is an unprecedented challenge for human societies, which recently is globally tackled by new technologies. In this chapter technologies tailored for use by the elderly people termed ambient assisted living and e-health are discussed. Focus is only placed on those technologies that can be adapted for home use. Emphasis is drawn both on the technical front as well as on the application front based on recent literature. The scope is to make sure the audience reaches a sufficiently broad understanding of what technology is available for home use by elderly people. Applications and research efforts spent but also funded at the European level with a clear focus on those supported by elderly trials are provided. The chapter is enriched with case studies from various projects.


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