Intelligent Spaces as Assistive Environments: Visual Fall Detection Using an Evolutive Algorithm

摘要

Artificial vision provides a remarkable good sensor when developing applications for intelligent spaces. Cameras are passive sensors that supply a great amount of information and are quite cheap. This chapter presents an application for elderly care that detects falls or faints and automatically triggers the health alarm. It promotes the independent lifestyle of elder people at their homes as the monitoring application will call for timely health assistance when needed. The system extracts 3D information from several cameras and performs 3D tracking of the people in the intelligent space. One evolutive multimodal algorithm has been developed to continuously estimate the 3D positions in real time of several persons moving in the monitored area. It is based on 3D points and learns the visual appearance of the persons and uses colour and movement as tracking cues. The system has been validated with some experiments in different real environments.