A Smart Device Enabled System for Autonomous Fall Detection and Alert

• Main Authors: Jian He, Chen Hu, Xiaoyi Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2016-02-01
• Series: International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/2308183

The activity model based on 3D acceleration and gyroscope is created in this paper, and the difference between the activities of daily living (ADLs) and falls is analyzed at first. Meanwhile, the k NN algorithm and sliding window are introduced to develop a smart device enabled system for fall detection and alert, which is composed of a wearable motion sensor board and a smart phone. The motion sensor board integrated with triaxial accelerometer, gyroscope, and Bluetooth is attached to a custom vest worn by the elderly to capture the reluctant acceleration and angular velocity of ADLs in real time. The stream data via Bluetooth is then sent to a smart phone, which runs a program based on the k NN algorithm and sliding window to analyze the stream data and detect falls in the background. At last, the experiment shows that the system identifies simulated falls from ADLs with a high accuracy of 97.7%, while sensitivity and specificity are 94% and 99%, respectively. Besides, the smart phone can issue an alarm and notify caregivers to provide timely and accurate help for the elderly, as soon as a fall is detected.