Identification of Personal Actions with Brightness Distribution Sensors to Harmonize Domestic Affairs

摘要

There are many attempts to recognize actions using sensors in homes. Some of them aim to keep watching on the elderly living alone, while others try to bring ecological life, scheduling domestic actions consuming energy. We need an inexpensive method to make it prevail in the society. In the meantime, recognition results threaten privacy, if outsiders obtain them. Almost all people mind whether they are used in malicious ways. The sensor should prevent the leak of the privacy of users. This work proposes a method to recognize various domestic actions with a single kind of sensors, which is not only inexpensive, but also safe enough to protect the privacy. The method uses brightness distribution sensors presenting a sequence of cells, each of which indicates the brightness of one direction in the view area of the sensor. The method gets local features along with the persons who conduct domestic actions. The method enables to recognize both of domestic actions and the period in which they are conducted. To evaluate the accuracy of the method, 10 men and women have participated in an experiment, where they take various domestic actions in their own ways with 4 brightness distribution sensors installed on the wall of an actual kitchen. As a result, the method has marked high performance on the recognition of "vacuuming", "cooking, and "taking a rest", along with their periods. The method also identifies all examinees who conduct them in high accuracy. It is possible to recognize domestic actions in actual home spaces.