Research

According to a survey by the Tokyo Fire Department in 2014, approximately 80% of all cases of emergency transportation of elderly people are due to accidents involving falls. Since their consciousness cannot keep up with their declining physical abilities, they stumble over small steps, footwear, or clothing. Much research is done on the detection of falls, but it is too late after the actual fall. Therefore, we decided to eliminate the causes of falls by detecting the areas where people often stumble. Wearable devices have problems with forgetfulness and psychological resistance to wearing it, while non-wearable devices such as surveillance cameras have problems with blind spots and privacy protection. In this study, an acceleration sensor is attached to normal sandals to detect a stumble, while a network of infrared sensors installed on the ceiling works in conjunction to identify the location of the stumble. In our experiments, we were able to distinguish falls easily, but the accuracy rate of distinguishing stumbling from normal walking is currently only about 1/4, so we hope to improve the accuracy in the future.