CARE Midterm Project Review Report

A midterm review meeting of project CARE was held on November 4, 2010 in Vienna, at the Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH. The AAL Joint Programme (AAL) has been represented with Silas Olsson and Maria Goreczna (CMU), Diana Hodgins expert, and Gerda Geyer (Austrian NCP).

The major outcome of the meeting is the AAL’s midterm report about the project CARE.
The report states that the members of the consortium are working well together to achieve their project goals, and until now achieved the following results:

• The partners have identified the sensor system requirements and have carried out laboratory tests using a breadboard system. This has demonstrated that the proposed stereo sensor system with each sensor having 1/4 VGA resolution, will produce sufficient information for the application of fall detection. The partners have also identified the features that they will use, which will be calculated from the 3D image information. These features will provide the input to an Artificial Neural network (ANN), which will have two outputs, fall or no fall.
• Successful laboratory tests have been conducted on healthy people simulating falls.
• The ethical aspects have been considered.
• Dissemination of the project goals has been good to date.

The report summarizes that the progress towards the objectives has been good, with a clear strong management team monitoring their progress on a regular 3-4 monthly basis. The plans for the remaining project period are clear and the management team and partners are confident that they will be achieved within the 30 month project timescale.

Finally the AAL’s midterm report emphasizes that the CARE project has the opportunity to make a significant impact on the elderly living an independent life.

The consortia and Ahmed Nabil Belbachir, coordinator (AIT) of the project CARE, sincerely thank the reviewers for the fruitful discussion and constructive feedbacks, which will foster the success of the project outcomes. All proposed recommendations are considered for the second half of the project lifecycle.