Communications of the ACM
Wireless Network Detects Falls by the Elderly
A new fall-detection technology does not require seniors to wear monitoring devices; the monitors are instead built into the room.
Credit: AgingCare.com
New fall-detection technology developed by a team at the University of Utah would not require the elderly to wear any monitoring devices.
Researchers Brad Mager and Neal Patwari have built a monitoring system using a two-level array of radio-frequency sensors placed around the perimeter of a room at two heights that correspond to someone standing or lying down. The sensors are similar to those used in home wireless networks. Each sensor in the array transmits to another, and anyone standing or falling inside the network would alter the path of the signals sent between each pair of sensors. The fall-detection system also can distinguish between a dangerous fall and someone simply lying down on the floor.
"Ideally, the environment itself would be able to detect a fall and send an alert to a caregiver," Patwari says. By measuring the signal strength between each link in the network, an image is produced to display the approximate location of a person in the room with a resolution of about six inches.
The radio tomography imaging technique uses the one-dimensional link measurements from the sensor network to construct a three-dimensional image.
From University of Utah News
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