Eyewalker: A smart walker for senior citizens

Table of Contents

A smart walker for senior citizens

In developed countries, the population is getting older. In this context, the senior citizens are willing to keep being autonomous and independent. This autonomy also contributes to decreasing the costs related to health by fostering for the elderly to live in their home as long as possible. To help in their mobility, lots of elderly people use walkers. Example of a game walker A walker is a kind of trolley that sustains a user during a walk. It is mainly the elderly with light motor disability who uses this piece of equipment to walk indoor and outdoor. Using a walker requires a learning period. Unfortunately, even after this phase the use of such a tool is not trouble-free, with specific situations instigating the downfall of the user. Moreover, when growing old, the vision field narrows. It is precisely the goal of the “EyeWalker” project: to provide a “smart” walker. The project aims at developing a light and low-cost vision device to plug on a walker. The device shall detect hazardous situations (unseen obstacles or uneven grounds) both indoors and outdoors, in different illumination conditions, in known and unknown environments. The device would help preventing falls and thus increase security using stereo vision, data fusion, situation and context recognition.

Demos

The involved institutions

Publications

Full conference papers
  • [1] S. Cloix, V. Weiss, G. Bologna, T. Pun, D. Hasler, “Obstacle and planar object detection using sparse 3D information for a smart walker”, VISAPP 2014, 9th Int. Conf. on Computer Vision Theory and Applications, 5-8 January 2014, Lisbon, Portugal,
  • [2] V. Weiss, S. Cloix, G. Bologna, D. Hasler, T. Pun, “A robust, real-time ground change detector for a “smart” walker””, VISAPP 2014, 9th Int. Conf. on Computer Vision Theory and Applications, 5-8 January 2014, Lisbon, Portugal.
Posters, abstracts
  • [3] S. Cloix, V. Weiss, G. Bologna, T. Pun, D. Hasler , “Object detection and classification using sparse 3d information for a smart walker”, Swiss Vision Day 2013, Poster Session, 5 may 2013, ETH Zürich, Switzerland,
  • [4] V. Weiss, S. Cloix, G. Bologna, D. Hasler, T. Pun, “A ground change detection algorithm using colour and texture for a smart walker”, Swiss Vision Day 2013, Poster Session, 5 may 2013, ETH Zürich, Switzerland,
  • [5] G. Bologna, V. Weiss, S. Cloix, D. Hasler, T. Pun, “EyeWalker: vers un démbulateur intelligent discernant les obstacles et les changements de terrain”, SOFPEL 2013, XXe congrès, 29-30 November 2013, Geneva, Switzerland.