Pervasive Pose Estimation for Fall Detection

Falls are the second leading cause of accidental or unintentional injuries/deaths worldwide. Accurate pose estimation using commodity mobile devices will help early detection and injury assessment of falls, which are essential for the first aid of elderly falls. By following the definition of fall, we propose a Pervasive Pose Estimation scheme for fall detection (P \( ^2 \) Est), which measures changes in tilt angle and height of the human body. For the tilt measurement, P \( ^2 \) Est leverages the pointing of the mobile device, e.g., the smartphone, when unlocking to associate the Device coordinate system with the World coordinate system. For the height measurement, P \( ^2 \) Est exploits the fact that the person’s height remains unchanged while walking to calibrate the pressure difference between the device and the floor. We have prototyped and tested P \( ^2 \) Est in various situations and environments. Our extensive experimental results have demonstrated that P \( ^2 \) Est can track the body orientation irrespective of which pocket the phone is placed in. More importantly, it enables the phone’s barometer to detect falls in various environments with decimeter-level accuracy.