Automated Monitoring and Localization of People

拟议的研究计划的长期目标是开发一个系统，用于全面检测活动以及在自然环境中需要帮助的人的生理评估。例如，这包括跟踪老年人、痴呆症患者、儿童、囚犯的日常活动，以及检测老年人的福尔斯跌倒和突发危及生命的事件，如心脏病发作。该项目将允许对单独或与其他人一起生活的人进行持续监测，或同时监测几个人。NSERC Discovery研究计划所采用的方法与基于智能家居和日常活动识别的研究不同。在这里，提出了一个完整的解决方案，用于跟踪和评估的生理状态的多个人在现实环境中的基础上，只有射频后向散射信号。 我们建议使用雷达系统进行远程非接触式定位的人，他们的活动分类，以及估计他们的呼吸率。雷达系统将增加新开发的无源射频识别（RFID）系统，该系统将有助于定位和区分多人。在跟踪和监视单个人的情况下，仅雷达非接触式解决方案就足够了。 这项研究将重点放在开发新的算法，用于定位，呼吸率估计，分类和学习基于雷达和RFID系统信号的人的活动。将开发用于确定到达方向的RFID阅读器的新硬件和算法。这些算法将是稳健的，并被设计为在现实环境中运行。 五名研究生和两名博士后研究员将在这个为期5年的计划进行培训。该项目对加拿大很重要，因为它将提高加拿大和国外人民的生活质量。此外，它有可能导致大量节省保健费用，因为它将使医务工作者能够发现正在发生的事件，如老年人的福尔斯跌倒，并及时作出反应。

The long-term objective of the proposed research program is to develop a system for comprehensive detection of activities as well as physiological assessment of people who need assistance in their natural environments. For example, this includes tracking the daily activities of elderly people, people with dementia, children, inmates, as well as detecting falls of elderly people and sudden life-threatening events such as heart attack. This project will allow for continuous monitoring of a person who lives alone or with other people, or for simultaneous monitoring of several people. The approach taken in this NSERC Discovery research program differs from research based on smart home and recognition of daily activities. Here, a complete solution for tracking and assessment of physiological states of multiple people in realistic environments based only on radio-frequency backscattering signals is proposed. We propose using a radar system for remote contactless localization of people, classification of their activities as well as estimation of their breathing rates. The radar system will be augmented with newly developed passive radio frequency identification (RFID) system that will assist in localization and distinguishing among multiple people. In cases when a single person is tracked and monitored, radar-only non-contact-based solution is sufficient. This research will place a strong emphasis on the development of new algorithms for localization, breathing rate estimation, classification and learning about the activities of people based on signals from radar and RFID systems. New hardware and algorithms for the RFID reader for determining direction of arrivals will be developed. The algorithms will be robust and designed to operate in realistic environments. Five graduate students and two post-doctoral fellows will be trained in this 5-year program. The project is important for Canada because it will result in improving quality of life of the people of Canada and abroad. In addition, it has a potential to result in significant savings in health-care costs because it will allow medical workers to detect events in progress, such as falls of elderly people, and to react on time.