No abstract

Abnormal behaviour in the performance of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) can be an indicator of a progressive health problem or the occurrence of a hazardous incident. This paper presents an initial fusion approach of data collected from ambient (contact and thermal) and wearable (accelerometer) sensors in a smart environment to improve the recognition of the main steps of ADLs. An accurate recognition of these steps can support detecting abnormal behaviour in the form of deviations from the expected steps. The smart environment used is a smart kitchen and the ADLs considered are (i) prepare and drink tea, and (ii) prepare and drink coffee. These ADLs are deemed to have many occurrences during a typical day of a (elderly) person. The fusion approach presented considers the extraction of the most relevant features of the data collected from the two types of sensors (ambient and wearable) and the subsequent data analysis to recognise the main steps involved in the ADLs. Results show that this initial approach slightly improves the recognition of the main steps involved in the ADLs compared to the results obtained with just using data from the wearable sensors.

Accidental falls can cause serious injury to at risk individuals. This is especially true in the elderly community where falls are the leading cause of hospitalization, injury-related deaths and loss of independence. Detecting and rapidly responding to falls has shown to reduce the long-term impact of and risks associated with falls. A number of real time fall detection solutions exist, however, these have some deficiencies relating to privacy, maintenance, and correct usage. This study introduces a novel fall detection approach that aims to address some of these deficiencies through use of computer vision processes and ceiling mounted thermal vision sensors. A preliminary evaluation has been performed on this process showing promising results, with an accuracy of 68%, however, highlighting a number of issues related to false positives. Future work will improve this approach and provide extended evaluation.