Skip to main content

Accidental Fall Detection Based on Skeleton Joint Correlation and Activity Boundary

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advances in Visual Computing (ISVC 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 9475))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We propose a system to detect accidental fall from walking or sitting activity in a nursing home. Differing from the trajectory tracing techniques, which detects periodic movements, our algorithm explores secondary features (angle and distance), focusing on the correlation between joints and the boundary of this correlation. We generated skeleton joint data using the Kinect sensor because it is affordable and supports sufficiently large capture space. However, other similar smart sensors can also be used. The angle feature denotes the correlation between the normal vector of the floor and the vector formed by linking the knee and ankle (on the left and right leg separately). The distance feature denotes the correlation between the floor and each of several important joints. A fall is reported when the angle is greater than and the distance is less than the respective threshold value. We created an activity database to evaluate our technique. The activities simulate elderly people walking, sitting and falling. Experimental results show that our algorithm is simple to implement, has low computational cost and is able to detect 36/37 falling events, and 57/57 walking and sitting activities accurately.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Kiely, D.K., Kiel, D.P., Burrows, A.B., Lipsitz, L.A.: Identifying nursing home residents at risk for falling. J. Am. Geriatr. Soc. 46, 551–555 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Winters, J.: Emerging rehabilitative telehealthcare anywhere was the homecare technologies workshop visionary. Emerging and Accessible Telecommunications, Information and Healthcare Technologies, pp. 95–111 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Viet, V.Q., Lee, G., Choi, D.: Fall detection based on movement and smart phone technology. In: 2012 IEEE RIVF International Conference on Computing and Communication Technologies, Research, Innovation, and Vision for the Future (RIVF), pp. 1–4. IEEE (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Zhuang, X., Huang, J., Potamianos, G., Hasegawa-Johnson, M.: Acoustic fall detection using gaussian mixture models and gmm supervectors. In: IEEE International Conferenceon Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), pp. 69–72. IEEE (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Han, J., Shao, L., Xu, D., Shotton, J.: Enhanced computer vision with microsoft kinect sensor: a review. IEEE Trans. Cybern. 43, 1318–1334 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Bevilacqua, V., Nuzzolese, N., Barone, D., Pantaleo, M., Suma, M., D’Ambruoso, D., Volpe, A., Loconsole, C., Stroppa, F.: Fall detection in indoor environment with kinect sensor. In: 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications (INISTA) Proceedings, pp. 319–324. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Rougier, C., Auvinet, E., Rousseau, J., Mignotte, M., Meunier, J.: Fall detection from depth map video sequences. In: Abdulrazak, B., Giroux, S., Bouchard, B., Pigot, H., Mokhtari, M. (eds.) ICOST 2011. LNCS, vol. 6719, pp. 121–128. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Nghiem, A.T., Auvinet, E., Meunier, J.: Head detection using kinect camera and its application to fall detection. In: 2012 11th International Conference on Information Science, Signal Processing and their Applications (ISSPA), pp. 164–169. IEEE (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Stone, E.E., Skubic, M.: Fall detection in homes of older adults using the microsoft kinect. IEEE J. Biomed. Health Inform. 19, 290–301 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Le, T.L., Morel, J.M., et al.: An analysis on human fall detection using skeleton from microsoft kinect. In: 2014 IEEE 5th International Conference on Communications and Electronics (ICCE), pp. 484–489. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Miaou, S.G., Sung, P.H., Huang, C.Y.: A customized human fall detection system using omni-camera images and personal information. In: 1st Transdisciplinary Conference on Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare, D2H2 2006, pp. 39–42. IEEE (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Töreyin, B.U., Dedeoğlu, Y., Çetin, A.E.: HMM based falling person detection using both audio and video. In: Sebe, N., Lew, M., Huang, T.S. (eds.) HCI/ICCV 2005. LNCS, vol. 3766, pp. 211–220. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Auvinet, E., Multon, F., Saint-Arnaud, A., Rousseau, J., Meunier, J.: Fall detection with multiple cameras: an occlusion-resistant method based on 3-d silhouette vertical distribution. IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed. 15, 290–300 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Demiris, G., Oliver, D.P., Giger, J., Skubic, M., Rantz, M.: Older adults’ privacy considerations for vision based recognition methods of eldercare applications. Technol. Health Care 17, 41 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Alazrai, R., Zmily, A., Mowafi, Y.: Fall detection for elderly using anatomical-plane-based representation. In: 2014 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), pp. 5916–5919. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Kawatsu, C., Li, J., Chung, C.J.: Development of a fall detection system with microsoft kinect. In: Kim, J.-H., Matson, E., Myung, H., Xu, P. (eds.) Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications. AISC, vol. 208, pp. 623–630. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Irene Cheng .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Flores-Barranco, M.M., Ibarra-Mazano, MA., Cheng, I. (2015). Accidental Fall Detection Based on Skeleton Joint Correlation and Activity Boundary. In: Bebis, G., et al. Advances in Visual Computing. ISVC 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9475. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27863-6_45

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27863-6_45

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27862-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27863-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics