Wearable fall detection system

Falling is a serious issue among old aged population; it leads to severe injuries and consequences. Inability to move after a fall means that the subject cannot ask for help by himself, which increases the percentage of fall-induced injuries significantly. The objective of this paper is to design and to implement a fall detection and alert system for the elderly persons. It aims to facilitate the help after a fall, by featuring on-demand or automatic communication between them and caregivers. The system consists of a wearable monitoring device. The device is able to accurately distinguish falls from non-falls of elderly persons and then, by using existing proven technologies (GPS, GSM/GPRS), alerts their caregivers. Upon detecting a fall, the embedded system encompassing the accelerometer sensor, the GPS receiver, the processing unit and the GSM module send a warning message alerting others that a fall occurred along with its orientation. In addition, the device is able to alert caregivers that the user has left his place by sending an SMS containing his location (latitude and longitude coordinates) as soon as he crosses a predefined threshold distance. The developed prototype was evaluated and showed satisfactory performance.