Notification of dangerous situation for elderly people using visual cues
Hideaki Kanai, Goushi Tsuruma, Toyohisa Nakada, Susumu Kunifuji · 2008
There are various dangers that could lead to accidents in daily life at home. It is difficult for elderly people to realize these dangers beforehand. In this study, we focus on a method for enhancing the risk perception of elderly people. We have developed a system that enhances the awareness of dangerous situations. It performs the following functions: (1) it recognizes the behavior and situation of the elderly person, (2) it estimates the risk, and (3) when the risk is estimated to be high, it notifies the person of the risk by means of visual and audio cues. In this paper, we outline our system and report a user test that evaluates the notification function, particularly the use of visual cues in our experimental living environment. The result is that the visual cues are suitable for elderly rather than healthy people in the environment of a dark room. As a future work, we will investigate the effects of visual and audio cues as notifications of danger for elderly people.