A Real-time Pre-impact Fall Detection and Protection System

Abstract

As the aging of the population aggravates, the problem of fall has aroused more attention. We have proposed a novel pre-impact fall detection algorithm and protection system. The real-time algorithm used the thresholds of vertical velocity and displacement profile to detect fall events in switching periods of fast motion. It can effectively solve the problem of false alarms of jump and jogging for daily-life applications. A second-order lag filtering algorithm method was utilized to reduce the drift of the vertical velocity with good performance. In addition, the vertical displacement profile was calculated by using the vertical velocity estimation. The algorithm got 93.6% sensitivity and 95.6% specificity, which was higher than the algorithm without displacement with 75.6% specificity. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed detection method, which were evaluated by subjects wearing fall detection and airbag system.