IRIS - Raspberry Pi Competition 2026

VISION ACTIVE

IRIS

Intelligent Recognition & Incident Surveillance

A robot that watches over elderly care home residents so staff don't have to be everywhere at once. It patrols autonomously, spots when someone isn't moving, and raises the alarm - all without anyone needing to do a thing.

How it works

🤖

Patrol

Moves around the room on its own - no remote control needed

📷

Stream

Pi Camera sends live frames over a Python socket connection

👁

Analyse

MediaPipe tracks the nose-tip - stillness for too long means trouble

🔔

Alert

Staff get an instant alert to check on the resident straight away

System architecture

📷

Pi Camera

captures frames

raw frames

🍓

Raspberry Pi

encodes & sends

Python socket

💻

Laptop

runs pipeline

landmarks

👁

MediaPipe

stillness check

PWM signal

⚙️

Servos

drive wheels

Hardware Stack

COMPUTERaspberry Pi 4B

VISIONPi Camera Module V2

MOTION2x SG90-HV Servos

POWERHW-131 Module - USB

COMMSPython Sockets / WiFi

Estimated Cost

Raspberry Pi 4B~£50

Pi Camera V2~£20

2x SG90-HV Servos~£10

HW-131 + misc~£10

TOTAL~£90

What makes it special

No wearables - residents don't have to do anything
Nose-tip tracking catches stillness others miss
Pi handles everything - no extra microcontroller needed
Runs 24/7 without any staff input
Built on affordable, off-the-shelf parts
Easy to extend with extra sensors or alerts

At a glance

24/7

Always watching

Wearables needed

<10s

Stillness to alert

Why it matters

1 in 3

adults over 65 fall at least once a year, often going unnoticed for hours

500k+

care home residents in the UK with no continuous automated monitoring

minutes

can be the difference between full recovery and serious long-term harm