One of the main problems in the elderly population and for people with functional disabilities is falling when they are not supervised. Therefore, there is a need for monitoring systems with fall detection functionality. Mobile robots are a good solution for keeping the person in sight when compared to static-view sensors. Mobile-patrol robots can be used for a group of people and systems are less intrusive than ones based on mobile robots. In this paper, we propose a novel vision-based solution for fall detection based on a mobile-patrol robot that can correct its position in case of doubt. The overall approach can be formulated as an end-to-end solution based on two stages: person detection and fall classification. Deep learning-based computer vision is used for person detection and fall classification is done by using a learning-based Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. This approach mainly fulfills the following design requirements—simple to apply, adaptable, high performance, independent of person size, clothes, or the environment, low cost and real-time computing. Important to highlight is the ability to distinguish between a simple resting position and a real fall scene. One of the main contributions of this paper is the input feature vector to the SVM-based classifier. We evaluated the robustness of the approach using a realistic public dataset proposed in this paper called the Fallen Person Dataset (FPDS), with 2062 images and 1072 falls. The results obtained from different experiments indicate that the system has a high success rate in fall classification (precision of 100% and recall of 99.74%). Training the algorithm using our Fallen Person Dataset (FPDS) and testing it with other datasets showed that the algorithm is independent of the camera setup.

In this work, we address the problem of multi-vehicle detection and tracking for traffic monitoring applications. We preset a novel intelligent visual sensor for tracking-by-detection with simultaneous pose estimation. Essentially, we adapt an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to work not only with the detections of the vehicles but also with their estimated coarse viewpoints, directly obtained with the vision sensor. We show that enhancing the tracking with observations of the vehicle pose, results in a better estimation of the vehicles trajectories. For the simultaneous object detection and viewpoint estimation task, we present and evaluate two independent solutions. One is based on a fast GPU implementation of a Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) detector with Support Vector Machines (SVMs). For the second, we adequately modify and train the Faster R-CNN deep learning model, in order to recover from it not only the object localization but also an estimation of its pose. Finally, we publicly release a challenging dataset, the GRAM Road Traffic Monitoring (GRAM-RTM), which has been especially designed for evaluating multi-vehicle tracking approaches within the context of traffic monitoring applications. It comprises more than 700 unique vehicles annotated across more than 40.300 frames of three videos. We expect the GRAM-RTM becomes a benchmark in vehicle detection and tracking, providing the computer vision and intelligent transportation systems communities with a standard set of images, annotations and evaluation procedures for multi-vehicle tracking. We present a thorough experimental evaluation of our approaches with the GRAM-RTM, which will be useful for establishing further comparisons. The results obtained confirm that the simultaneous integration of vehicle localizations and pose estimations as observations in an EKF, improves the tracking results.

In this work, we propose the first study of a technical validation of an assistive robotic platform, which has been designed to assist people with neurodevelopmental disorders. The platform is called LOLA2 and it is equipped with an artificial intelligence-based application to reinforce the learning of daily life activities in people with neurodevelopmental problems. LOLA2 has been integrated with an ROS-based navigation system and a user interface for healthcare professionals and their patients to interact with it. Technically, we have been able to embed all these modules into an NVIDIA Jetson Xavier board, as well as an artificial intelligence agent for online action detection (OAD). This OAD approach provides a detailed report on the degree of performance of a set of daily life activities that are being learned or reinforced by users. All the human–robot interaction process to work with users with neurodevelopmental disorders has been designed by a multidisciplinary team. Among its main features are the ability to control the robot with a joystick, a graphical user interface application that shows video tutorials with the activities to reinforce or learn, and the ability to monitor the progress of the users as they complete tasks. The main objective of the assistive robotic platform LOLA2 is to provide a system that allows therapists to track how well the users understand and perform daily tasks. This paper focuses on the technical validation of the proposed platform and its application. To do so, we have carried out a set of tests with four users with neurodevelopmental problems and special physical conditions under the supervision of the corresponding therapeutic personnel. We present detailed results of all interventions with end users, analyzing the usability, effectiveness, and limitations of the proposed technology. During its initial technical validation with real users, LOLA2 was able to detect the actions of users with disabilities with high precision. It was able to distinguish four assigned daily actions with high accuracy, but some actions were more challenging due to the physical limitations of the users. Generally, the presence of the robot in the therapy sessions received excellent feedback from medical professionals as well as patients. Overall, this study demonstrates that our developed robot is capable of assisting and monitoring people with neurodevelopmental disorders in performing their daily living tasks.

In this paper, we present a new low-cost robotic platform that has been explicitly developed to increase children with neurodevelopmental disorders’ involvement in the environment during everyday living activities. In order to support the children and youth with both the sequencing and learning of everyday living tasks, our robotic platform incorporates a sophisticated online action detection module that is capable of monitoring the acts performed by users. We explain all the technical details that allow many applications to be introduced to support individuals with functional diversity. We present this work as a proof of concept, which will enable an assessment of the impact that the developed technology may have on the collective of children and youth with neurodevelopmental disorders in the near future.

From this paper, we propose a novel methodology to compute a 2D homography applying some algorithms of computer algebra. We consider the classical problem of solving (exactly) a linear system of algebraic equations, and we suggest a new algorithm for computer vision, based on homomorphism methods over Zopf, to solve a system of equations necessary to achieve a 3 times 3 matrix H which lets us to compute the projective transformation which translates coordinates between points in different planes. From this work, we want to show that it is possible to apply a symbolic approach to some crucial issues of computer vision, moreover of the numerical methodology, in order to reduce the complexity of some algorithms, and to eliminate the problems associated with loss of precision and normalization. We test our technique in a real situation: a parking management system, which creates a pseudo-top-view of a parking area to determine if there are free parking lots or not.