Heilym Ramirez

Prof. Heilym Ramirez

Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaíso, Chile
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orcid

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

6Years (2021-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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23 February 2021 in IEEE Access
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
Heilym RamirezHeilym Ramirez
Heilym Ramirez
SVSergio A. Velastin
Sergio A. Velastin
IMIgnacio Meza
Ignacio Meza
Ernesto FabregasErnesto Fabregas
Ernesto Fabregas
Dimitris P. MakrisDimitris P. Makris
Dimitris P. Makris
GFGonzalo Farias
Gonzalo Farias
Human activity recognition has attracted the attention of researchers around the world. This is an interesting problem that can be addressed in different ways. Many approaches have been presented during the last years. These applications present solutions to recognize different kinds of activities such as if the person is walking, running, jumping, jogging, or falling, among others. Amongst all these activities, fall detection has special importance because it is a common dangerous event for people of all ages with a more negative impact on the elderly population. Usually, these applications use sensors to detect sudden changes in the movement of the person. These kinds of sensors can be embedded in smartphones, necklaces, or smart wristbands to make them “wearable” devices. The main inconvenience is that these devices have to be placed on the subjects' bodies. This might be uncomfortable and is not always feasible because this type of sensor must be monitored constantly, and can not be used in open spaces with unknown people. In this way, fall detection from video camera images presents some advantages over the wearable sensor-based approaches. This paper presents a vision-based approach to fall detection and activity recognition. The main contribution of the proposed method is to detect falls only by using images from a standard video-camera without the need to use environmental sensors. It carries out the detection using human skeleton estimation for features extraction. The use of human skeleton detection opens the possibility for detecting not only falls but also different kind of activities for several subjects in the same scene. So this approach can be used in real environments, where a large number of people may be present at the same time. The method is evaluated with the UP-FALL public dataset and surpasses the performance of other fall detection and activities recognition systems that use that dataset.

25 May 2022 in Sensors
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
Heilym RamirezHeilym Ramirez
Heilym Ramirez
Sergio A. VelastinSergio A. Velastin
Sergio A. Velastin
PAPaulo Alejandro Aguayo
Paulo Alejandro Aguayo
Ernesto FabregasErnesto Fabregas
Ernesto Fabregas
GFGonzalo Farias
Gonzalo Farias
In recent years, much effort has been devoted to the development of applications capable of detecting different types of human activity. In this field, fall detection is particularly relevant, especially for the elderly. On the one hand, some applications use wearable sensors that are integrated into cell phones, necklaces or smart bracelets to detect sudden movements of the person wearing the device. The main drawback of these types of systems is that these devices must be placed on a person’s body. This is a major drawback because they can be uncomfortable, in addition to the fact that these systems cannot be implemented in open spaces and with unfamiliar people. In contrast, other approaches perform activity recognition from video camera images, which have many advantages over the previous ones since the user is not required to wear the sensors. As a result, these applications can be implemented in open spaces and with unknown people. This paper presents a vision-based algorithm for activity recognition. The main contribution of this work is to use human skeleton pose estimation as a feature extraction method for activity detection in video camera images. The use of this method allows the detection of multiple people’s activities in the same scene. The algorithm is also capable of classifying multi-frame activities, precisely for those that need more than one frame to be detected. The method is evaluated with the public UP-FALL dataset and compared to similar algorithms using the same dataset.

26 January 2023 in Sensors
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
Heilym RamirezHeilym Ramirez
Heilym Ramirez
Sergio A. VelastinSergio A. Velastin
Sergio A. Velastin
SCSara Lizeth Cuellar
Sara Lizeth Cuellar
Ernesto FabregasErnesto Fabregas
Ernesto Fabregas
GFGonzalo Farias
Gonzalo Farias
Recently, the scientific community has placed great emphasis on the recognition of human activity, especially in the area of health and care for the elderly. There are already practical applications of activity recognition and unusual conditions that use body sensors such as wrist-worn devices or neck pendants. These relatively simple devices may be prone to errors, might be uncomfortable to wear, might be forgotten or not worn, and are unable to detect more subtle conditions such as incorrect postures. Therefore, other proposed methods are based on the use of images and videos to carry out human activity recognition, even in open spaces and with multiple people. However, the resulting increase in the size and complexity involved when using image data requires the use of the most recent advanced machine learning and deep learning techniques. This paper presents an approach based on deep learning with attention to the recognition of activities from multiple frames. Feature extraction is performed by estimating the pose of the human skeleton, and classification is performed using a neural network based on Bidirectional Encoder Representation of Transformers (BERT). This algorithm was trained with the UP-Fall public dataset, generating more balanced artificial data with a Generative Adversarial Neural network (GAN), and evaluated with real data, outperforming the results of other activity recognition methods using the same dataset.

5 July 2021 in IET Conference Proceedings
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
Heilym RamirezHeilym Ramirez
Heilym Ramirez
SVS. A. Velastin
S. A. Velastin
EFE. Fabregas
E. Fabregas
IMI. Meza
I. Meza
DMD. Makris
D. Makris
GFG. Farias
G. Farias
Falls are one of the leading causes of death and serious injury in people, especially for the elderly. In addition, falls accidents have a direct financial cost for health systems and, indirectly, for the productivity of society. Among the most important problems in fall detection systems is privacy, limitations of operating devices, and the comparison of machine learning techniques for detection. This article presents a fall detection system by means of a k-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier based on camera-vision using pose detection of the human skeleton for the features extraction. The proposed method is evaluated with UP-FALL dataset, surpassing the results of other fall detection systems that use the same database. This method achieves a 98.84% accuracy and an F 1-Score of 97.41%.

24 May 2024 in Sensors
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
GGGonzalo Garcia
Gonzalo Garcia
Sergio A. VelastinSergio A. Velastin
Sergio A. Velastin
NLNicolas Lastra
Nicolas Lastra
Heilym RamirezHeilym Ramirez
Heilym Ramirez
SSSebastian Seriani
Sebastian Seriani
GFGonzalo Farias
Gonzalo Farias
Pedestrian monitoring in crowded areas like train stations has an important impact in the overall operation and management of those public spaces. An organized distribution of the different elements located inside a station will contribute not only to the safety of all passengers but will also allow for a more efficient process of the regular activities including entering/leaving the station, boarding/alighting from trains, and waiting. This improved distribution only comes by obtaining sufficiently accurate information on passengers’ positions, and their derivatives like speeds, densities, traffic flow. The work described here addresses this need by using an artificial intelligence approach based on computational vision and convolutional neural networks. From the available videos taken regularly at subways stations, two methods are tested. One is based on tracking each person’s bounding box from which filtered 3D kinematics are derived, including position, velocity and density. Another infers the pose and activity that a person has by analyzing its main body key points. Measurements of these quantities would enable a sensible and efficient design of inner spaces in places like railway and subway stations.

12 May 2025 in Applied Sciences
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
Heilym RamirezHeilym Ramirez
Heilym Ramirez
SSSebastian Seriani
Sebastian Seriani
VFVicente Aprigliano Fernandes
Vicente Aprigliano Fernandes
AFAlvaro Peña Fritz
Alvaro Peña Fritz
Bernardo Andrés Arredondo SaavedraBernardo Andrés Arredondo Saavedra
Bernardo Andrés Arredondo Saavedra
GFGonzalo Farias
Gonzalo Farias
This study presents an artificial intelligence-based approach for the pose detection of passengers’ skeletons when boarding and alighting from an urban bus in Valparaíso, Chile. Using the AlphaPose pose estimator and an activity recognition model based on Random Forest, video data were processed to analyze the poses and activities of passengers. The results obtained allow for an evaluation of safety and ergonomics in public transportation, providing valuable information for improving design and accessibility in buses. This approach not only enhances understanding of passenger behavior but also contributes to the optimization of bus systems to accommodate diverse needs, ensuring a safer and more comfortable environment for all users. AlphaPose accurately estimates the posture of passengers, offering insights into their movements when interacting with the bus. In addition, the Random Forest model recognizes a variety of activities, from walking to sitting, helping to analyze how passengers interact with the space. The analysis helps identify areas where improvements can be made in terms of accessibility, comfort, and safety, contributing to the overall design of public transport systems. This study opens up new possibilities for AI-driven urban transportation analysis and can serve as a foundation for future improvements in transportation planning.