Senior citizens and patients recovering from surgery or using strong medications with severe side effects
tend to fall unexpectedly. The consequences of such an uncontrolled fall could be worse than the original
malady, especially when there is no communication with the care-takers. We describe a fall-detector device
capable of distinguishing falls from normal daily activities. Based on three-axis accelerometer and
advanced data processing, the microcontroller emits an alarm requesting help in the case of a physical fall.
We design and construct the fall-detector prototype for either inside or outside use. In order to determine
the device performance, fifty instances of each fall event have been evaluated; all of them detected as fall
event. In the case of daily activities, the only movement that produces an alarm is the transition from
standing up to lying in 5% of the occurrences.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.