An Approach for Improving the Older people’s Perception of Video-Based Applications in AAL Systems – Initial Study

Abstract

It is an indisputable fact that the inclusion of video surveillance tools in the Active and Assistive Living (AAL) system contributes to a significant increase in reliability, especially in the detection of critical life-threatening conditions. Therefore, the efforts of researchers are focused on the development and implementation of innovative technological solutions and algorithms for image processing, which allow to overcome a number of privacy issues. Despite these efforts, the widespread use of video-based applications in AAL systems is still limited due to the older people’s fears of being watched.

This study presents a new approach, consisting in the change of the synergy between the two main elements of AAL systems - the person in need of care and the video-based technological solution that detects/confirms the need for help. The essence of this approach is to provide a choice to the assisted person to activate/deactivate the video surveillance system depending on the personal assessment of his/her condition. This does not exclude the possibility that in the absence of a deactivation command, in a certain period after the announcement of the forthcoming activation, video monitoring to be turned on autonomously.

Initial studies were conducted with five people (75–84 years old) residents of an elderly hostel. When only accelerometer sensors were used to detect falls, the number of false alarms was quite high. After installing video cameras in the rooms of three of the participants, the number of confirmed alarms based on video analysis decreased to almost zero. For one of these three people, who had several incidents of falling out of bed in the previous period, 3 falls were registered with a camera in 24 days and were alerted on time.