SVM to detect the presence of visitors in a smart home environment

Johanna Petersen, Nicole Larimer, Jeffrey A. Kaye, Misha Pavel, Tamara L. Hayes

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

31 Scopus citations

Abstract

With the rising age of the population, there is increased need to help elderly maintain their independence. Smart homes, employing passive sensor networks and pervasive computing techniques, enable the unobtrusive assessment of activities and behaviors of the elderly which can be useful for health state assessment and intervention. Due to the multiple health benefits associated with socializing, accurately tracking whether an individual has visitors to their home is one of the more important aspects of elders' behaviors that could be assessed with smart home technology. With this goal, we have developed a preliminary SVM model to identify periods where untagged visitors are present in the home. Using the dwell time, number of sensor firings, and number of transitions between major living spaces (living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom) as features in the model, and self report from two subjects as ground truth, we were able to accurately detect the presence of visitors in the home with a sensitivity and specificity of 0.90 and 0.89 for subject 1, and of 0.67 and 0.78 for subject 2, respectively. These preliminary data demonstrate the feasibility of detecting visitors with in-home sensor data, but highlight the need for more advanced modeling techniques so the model performs well for all subjects and all types of visitors.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2012
Pages5850-5853
Number of pages4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS 2012 - San Diego, CA, United States
Duration: Aug 28 2012Sep 1 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
ISSN (Print)1557-170X

Other

Other34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Diego, CA
Period8/28/129/1/12

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Signal Processing
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Health Informatics

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