AI-Powered Noncontact In-Home Gait Monitoring and Activity Recognition System Based on mm-Wave FMCW Radar and Cloud Computing

Abstract

In this work, we present a cloud-based system for noncontact, real-time recognition, and monitoring of physical activities and walking periods within a domestic environment. The proposed system employs standalone Internet of Things (IoT)-based millimeter wave radar devices and deep learning models to enable autonomous, free-living activity recognition, and gait analysis. To train deep learning models, we utilize range-Doppler maps generated from a data set of real-life in-home activities. The performance of several deep learning models is evaluated based on accuracy and prediction time, with the gated recurrent network [gated recurrent unit (GRU)] model selected for real-time deployment due to its balance of speed and accuracy compared to 2-D convolutional neural network long short-term memory (2D-CNNLSTM) and long short-term memory (LSTM) models. The overall accuracy of the GRU model for classifying in-home physical activities of trained subjects is 93%, with 86% accuracy for a new subject. In addition to recognizing and differentiating various activities and walking periods, the system also records the subject's activity level over time, washroom use frequency, sleep/sedentary/active/out-of-home durations, current state, and gait parameters. Importantly, the system maintains privacy by not requiring the subject to wear or carry any additional devices.