Using Camera Array to Detect Elderly Falling and Distribute Alerting Media for Smart Home Care

Towards an aging society, applying information and communication technologies to advance elderly's home care services to be smart, i.e., smart home care, becomes a significant research theme. Considering falling is specially dangerous to the elderly, immediately detecting the elderly's fall and alerting exigency events to whom have concerns about, e.g., hospitals, healthcare center and family members, is crucial. In this paper, we take advantage of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to develop smart home care services and help to distribute instant information to remote users outside the home domain. We propose a camera-built peer-to-peer (P2P) network system on which a camera array will cooperate in detecting falling, broadcasting alert events and distributing captured media streams in an elderly activity area. Multiple cameras with Wi-Fi and IoT functions can organize an in-house P2P network where cameras can publish, subscribe and relay media content. In addition, a gateway device in charge will send that information to the remote user. For a proof-of-concept implementation, our study develops an application-level prototype based on the P2P networking techniques. A practical scenario of elderly fall detection and alerting media distribution services in elder living environments is demonstrated to highlight the functionality of this system architecture for smart home care services.