Detecting unusual inactivity by introducing activity histogram comparisons

Unusual inactivity at elderly's homes is an evidence that help is needed. Hence, the automatic detection of abnormal behaviour with a low number of false positives is desired. The aim of this work is to improve the accuracy of inactivity detection by introducing a new approach based on histogram comparison in order to reliably detect abnormal behaviour in elderly's homes. The proposed approach compares activity histograms with a pre-trained reference histogram and detects deviations from normal behavior. Evaluation is performed on a dataset containing 103 days of activity, where six days were reported as containing “unusual” inactivity (i.e., longer absence from home) by an elderly couple.