Bayesian recognition of safety relevant motion activities with inertial sensors and barometer

Activity recognition has been a hot topic in research throughout the last years. Walking, standing, sitting or lying have been detected with more or less confidence, in more or less suitable system designs. None of these systems however has entered daily life, neither in mass market, nor in professional environments. What is required is an unobtrusive system, requiring few resources and — most important — recognizing all important activities with high confidence. To this end, our research has focused on the professional market for safety related applications: first responders or also military use. Next to the classical motion related activities, our system supports motions in three dimensions that are necessary for all kinds of movements indoors as well as outdoors. These include falling, wriggling, crawling, climbing stairs up and down and using an elevator. We have proven this approach to run in real-time with only a single wireless sensor attached to the body while achieving robust and reliable recognition with a delay lower than two seconds.