Monitoring Inactivity of Single Older Adults at Home

A new application for real-time monitoring of the lack of movement in older adults' own homes is proposed, aiming to support people's lives and independence in their later years. A lightweight camera monitoring system, based on an RGB-D camera and a compact computer processor, was developed and piloted in community homes to observe the daily behavior of older adults. Instances of body inactivity were detected in everyday scenarios anonymously and unobtrusively. These events can be explained at a higher level, such as a loss of consciousness or physiological deterioration. The accuracy of the inactivity monitoring system is assessed, and statistics of inactivity events related to the daily behavior of the older adults are provided. The results demonstrate that our method performs accurately in inactivity detection across various environments, including low room lighting, TV flickering, and different camera views.