CARE: A dynamic stereo vision sensor system for fall detection

This paper presents a recently developed dynamic stereo vision sensor system and its application for fall detection towards safety for elderly at home. The system consists of (1) two optical detector chips with 304×240 event-driven pixels which are only sensitive to relative light intensity changes, (2) an FPGA for interfacing the detectors, early data processing, and stereo matching for depth map reconstruction, (3) a digital signal processor for interpreting the sensor data in real-time for fall recognition, and (4) a wireless communication module for instantly alerting caring institutions. This system was designed for incident detection in private homes of elderly to foster safety and security. The two main advantages of the system, compared to existing wearable systems are from the application´s point of view: (a) the stationary installation has a better acceptance for independent living comparing to permanent wearing devices, and (b) the privacy of the system is systematically ensured since the vision detector does not produce real images such as classic video sensors. The system can actually process about 300 kevents per second. It was evaluated using 500 fall cases acquired with a stuntman. More than 90% positive detections were reported. We will show a live demonstration during ISCAS2012 of the sensor system and its capabilities.