A Passive Floor-Vibration Based Fall Detector

Falls are very prevalent among the elderly. They are the second leading cause of unintentional-injury death for people of all ages and the leading cause of death for elders 79 years and older. Studies have shown that the medical outcome of a fall is largely dependent upon the response and rescue time. Hence, a highly accurate automatic fall detector is an important component of the living setting for older adult to expedite and improve the medical care provided to this population. Though there are several kinds offall detectors currently available, they suffer from various drawbacks. Some of them are intrusive while others require the user to wear and activate the devices, and hence may fail in the event of user non-compliance. This paper describes the working principle and the design ofafloor vibration-basedfall detector that is completely passive and unobtrusive to the resident. The detector was designed to overcome some of the common drawbacks of the earlier fall detectors. The performance ofthe detector is evaluated by conducting controlled laboratory tests using anthropomorphic dummies. The results showed 100% fall detection rate with minimum potential for false alarms. 1