Behaviour Monitoring and Interpretation

Abstract

This chapter describes the field of Behaviour Monitoring and Interpretation, BMI for short, which defines a framework for the analysis and design of systems for the monitoring and interpretation of human behaviour. As an example scenario which is analysed by means of that framework, a pedestrian navigation and service tool is presented. This scenario is about a mobile user who is wearing a hearing-aid similar device that instructs him while walking through the city. The navigation assistant can be equipped with specific application constraints in order to enrich the navigation system with an application context. The navigation system guides the user through the environment while taking care of the application constraints. One application context is a child at pre-school age: within this context the idea is to guide the child along a safe path to kindergarten. There are many challenges involved in the development of such a pedestrian navigation system. This chapter focuses on the analysis of the behaviour of the user that determines how the navigation assistant can provide help in an appropriate way. By this means, principles underlying the field of behaviour monitoring and interpretation are explained. More specifically, how the BMI framework aids in analysing is shown along with how top-down and bottom-up processes are to be involved in behaviour recognition; additionally, how the framework supports the identification of information fusion at different abstraction layers is shown.