We propose in this paper a novel algorithm as well as architecture for the fall accident detection and corresponding wide area rescue system based on a smart phone and the third generation (3G) networks. To realize the fall detection algorithm, the angles acquired by the electronic compass (ecompass) and the waveform sequence of the triaxial accelerometer on the smart phone are used as the system inputs. The acquired signals are then used to generate an ordered feature sequence and then examined in a sequential manner by the proposed cascade classifier for recognition purpose. Once the corresponding feature is verified by the classifier at current state, it can proceed to next state; otherwise, the system will reset to the initial state and wait for the appearance of another feature sequence. Once a fall accident event is detected, the user's position can be acquired by the global positioning system (GPS) or the assisted GPS, and sent to the rescue center via the 3G communication network so that the user can get medical help immediately. With the proposed cascaded classification architecture, the computational burden and power consumption issue on the smart phone system can be alleviated. Moreover, as we will see in the experiment that a distinguished fall accident detection accuracy up to 92% on the sensitivity and 99.75% on the specificity can be obtained when a set of 450 test actions in nine different kinds of activities are estimated by using the proposed cascaded classifier, which justifies the superiority of the proposed algorithm.

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In this paper, a wireless hand gesture recognition glove is proposed for real-time translation of Taiwanese sign language. To discriminate between different hand gestures, we have flex and inertial sensors embedded into the glove so that the three most important parameters, i.e., the posture of fingers, orientation of the palm, and motion of the hand, defined in Taiwanese Sign Language can be recognized without ambiguity. The finger flexion postures acquired by flex sensors, the palm orientation acquired by G-sensor, and the motion trajectory acquired by gyroscope are used as the input signals of the proposed system. The input signals will be acquired and examined periodically to see if it is a legal sign language gesture or not. Once the sampled signal can last longer than a predefined clock cycles, it is regarded as a valid gesture and will be sent to cell phone via Bluetooth for gesture discrimination and speech translation. With the proposed architecture and algorithm, the accuracy for gesture recognition is quite satisfactory. As we can see in experiments that an accuracy rate up to 94% on sensitivity for gesture recognition can be achieved which justifies the superiority of the proposed architecture.

An efficient approach to the sharpening of color images is proposed in this paper. For this, the image to be sharpened is first transformed to the HSV color model, and then only the channel of Value will be used for the process of sharpening while the other channels are left unchanged. We then apply a proposed edge detector and low-pass filter to the channel of Value to pick out pixels around boundaries. After that, those pixels detected as around edges or boundaries are adjusted so that the boundary can be sharpened, and those nonedge pixels are kept unaltered. The increment or decrement magnitude that is to be added to those edge pixels is determined in an adaptive manner based on global statistics of the image and local statistics of the pixel to be sharpened. With the proposed approach, the discontinuities can be highlighted while most of the original information contained in the image can be retained. Finally, the adjusted channel of Value and that of Hue and Saturation will be integrated to get the sharpened color image. Extensive experiments on natural images will be given in this paper to highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.

This paper proposes body posture recognition and turning recording system for assisting the care of bed bound patients in nursing homes. The system continuously detects the patient's body posture and records the length of time for each body posture. If the patient remains in the same body posture long enough to develop pressure ulcers, the system notifies caregivers to change the patient's body posture. The objective of recording is to provide the log of body turning for querying of patients' family members. In order to accurately detect patient's body posture, we developed a novel pressure sensing pad which contains force sensing resistor sensors. Based on the proposed pressure sensing pad, we developed a bed posture recognition module which includes a bed posture recognition algorithm. The algorithm is based on fuzzy theory. The body posture recognition algorithm can detect the patient's bed posture whether it is right lateral decubitus, left lateral decubitus, or supine. The detected information of patient's body posture can be then transmitted to the server of healthcare center by the communication module to perform the functions of recording and notification. Experimental results showed that the average posture recognition accuracy for our proposed module is 92%.