Monocular 3D head tracking to detect falls of elderly people.

Faced with the growing population of seniors, Western societies need to think about new technologies to ensure the safety of elderly people at home. Computer vision provides a good solution for healthcare systems because it allows a specific analysis of people behavior. Moreover, a system based on video surveillance is particularly well adapted to detect falls. We present a new method to detect falls using a single camera. Our approach is based on the 3D trajectory of the head, which allows us to distinguish falls from normal activities using 3D velocities.