SonicSentinel

Improved safety of the patient and a higher efficiency in residental and non-residental care are important issues currently discussed with regard to the demographic change. Reliably triggering an emergency call is a vital precondition for safety in nursing today. Currently used mobile and stationary emergency signalling systems are often hardly usable by elderly or impaired people due to their limitations (e.g. dementia, palsy). After falling down, for example, people often stay undetected for too long. A continuous monitoring by the nursing staff on the other hand often is an issue of time and budget. In the "SonicSentinel" project, an intelligent noise guard is to be developed and tested that automatically triggers emergency calls in hazard situations or when help is required. The goal is to distinguish different noises and noise classes. Noise emmissions and potentially hazardous events (e.g. cries, whimpering, falls from a bed, etc.) shall be automatically recorded and analyzed for special hints of emergencies or the need of support.

Responsibilities of Fraunhofer IDMT

In this project, the Fraunhofer IDMT's Oldenburg Branch for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology HSA develops new concepts for implementing an acoustic event detection on embedded systems with much less performance than PCs. A special challenge is the development of detectors that are working robustly also in acoustically difficult environments (background noises, room echo, etc.).