Activity Recognition for Ambient Assisted Living Using Off-the-shelf Motion Sensing Input Devices

In recent years, healthcare and safety monitoring for older adults has become a worldwide concern. As older adults want to age at home, sensor technology has the potential to support their choice by monitoring health status, detecting emergency situations and notifying caregivers in case of emergency situations. Moreover, using new technologies such as the Kinect sensor could bring new ways to build in-home intelligent systems, having already demonstrated performance and accuracy when monitoring older adults. The purpose of this paper is to present an application that allows healthcare providers to take care remotely of older adults by providing live monitoring of the patients. Using a Kinect sensor, the application evaluates the active life of the tracked person, determines the hydration status and notifies the caregiver if the patient is calling for help or needs an ambulance.