PhD Studentship: Use of Active Computer Vision to Identify Emergency Events for Living-alone Older People

Post Type: Full-time PhD student, 3 years, fully funded

The research aims to develop a proactive monitoring system based on computer vision technology that will automatically detect emergency events at homes where frail elders live alone. The novelty of the project lies in applying computer visual surveillance to target real user needs, in developing robust methods and algorithms for the interpretation of indoor emergency events, and in examining the feasibility of the integrated monitoring system for aged people from the perception of health and social services. This monitoring must be achieved in a non-intrusive yet robust and cost-effective manner. To be robust, a number of significant research challenges must be addressed. The core task is to automatically detect emergency events such as falls, burns, or abnormal daily behaviour based on real-time image data. The research will produce effective approaches for vision-based behaviour interpretation under designated scenarios.

The studentship includes i) a stipend of approximate £12600 per year for 3 years; and ii) full provision for academic fees for Home-EU students. Non-EU (overseas) students may apply and are still eligible for the stipend but they will need to demonstrate that they are able to fund the difference between home/EU and overseas academic fees (approx. £6K per year).

Graduates and final year undergraduates interested in these areas are strongly encouraged to apply. For informal enquiries, please contact Dr. H. Wei or Dr. Rachel McCrindle. Application packs may be obtained from the Faculty of Science, e-mail: scipg@reading.ac.uk. General information about University of Reading may be found at: http://www.reading.ac.uk.

The full description of the PhD studentship can be found here.