Seamless tracing of human behavior using complementary wearable and house-embedded sensors

Sensors (Basel). 2014 Apr 29;14(5):7831-56. doi: 10.3390/s140507831.

Abstract

This paper presents a multimodal system for seamless surveillance of elderly people in their living environment. The system uses simultaneously a wearable sensor network for each individual and premise-embedded sensors specific for each environment. The paper demonstrates the benefits of using complementary information from two types of mobility sensors: visual flow-based image analysis and an accelerometer-based wearable network. The paper provides results for indoor recognition of several elementary poses and outdoor recognition of complex movements. Instead of complete system description, particular attention was drawn to a polar histogram-based method of visual pose recognition, complementary use and synchronization of the data from wearable and premise-embedded networks and an automatic danger detection algorithm driven by two premise- and subject-related databases. The novelty of our approach also consists in feeding the databases with real-life recordings from the subject, and in using the dynamic time-warping algorithm for measurements of distance between actions represented as elementary poses in behavioral records. The main results of testing our method include: 95.5% accuracy of elementary pose recognition by the video system, 96.7% accuracy of elementary pose recognition by the accelerometer-based system, 98.9% accuracy of elementary pose recognition by the combined accelerometer and video-based system, and 80% accuracy of complex outdoor activity recognition by the accelerometer-based wearable system.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Accelerometry / instrumentation*
  • Actigraphy / instrumentation*
  • Behavior / physiology*
  • Computer Communication Networks / instrumentation*
  • Equipment Design
  • Equipment Failure Analysis
  • Humans
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / instrumentation*
  • Monitoring, Ambulatory / instrumentation*
  • Systems Integration
  • Video Recording / instrumentation*