Fall Detection System Based on Kinect Sensor Using Novel Detection and Posture Recognition Algorithm

Elderly falls are a growing phenomenon observed within the world. According to World Health Organization (WHO), it is the second leading cause of unintentional or accidental deaths among the elderly. Thus, the need for research regarding the development of fall detection systems is imperative. Researchers have utilized various approaches to develop fall detection systems, significant number of which have employed Machine Leaning (ML) algorithms for fall detection. In this study, we evaluated the efficiency of six ML algorithms on a public fall detection dataset. A robust deep neural network for fall detection (FD-DNN) is identified to be the current state-of-the-art, it detects falls by using a self-built sensor that consumes low power. By evaluating the efficiency of six machine learning algorithms on a publicly available joint fall detection dataset, the accuracy of the fall detection was increased from 99.17% to 99.88% by using the K-nearest Neighbor indicating that common machine learning algorithms can achieve identical or higher accuracy rendering the complex and expensive deep neural network-based fall detection systems inefficient.KeywordsFall detectionElderly fall detectionMachine learning algorithmsWearable fall detection systemSisFall datasetMobiFall datasetK-nearest neighborsKNNSupport vector machinesSVMDecision treeRandom forestLogistic regressionNaïve Bayes

Falls are the main cause of injury in the elderly people. Therefore, fall detection system in the elderly is an essential technology for aging society. This project was designed to develop the fall detection system based on wearable sensors and Internet of Things for the real-time fall detection, data storage, calculation, and notification. The raw data, kinematics signal from the daily living of elder, including three-dimensional accelerometer and gyroscope are provided by GY-85, which have been sent bidots cloud via NodeMCU-ESP32. Further, the NodeMCU-ESP32 avail of the raw data to specify the fall detection algorithm. Moreover, the NodeMCU-ESP32 is designed to achieve the seamless communication between the fall detection device and system to acquire and process the data anywhere anytime as long as there is wifi connection. Consequently, the Ubidots cloud is designed to perform the calculation based on support vector machine (SVM) theory. It also sends the fall detection result via LINE notification (chat application) to caregivers. The tests of the proposed system are performed based on activities of daily living and the directions that fall can occur. The results of the testing show that the proposed system can provide high accuracy and reliability in fall detection.

A fall detection system and algorithm, incorporated into a custom designed garment has been developed. The developed fall detection system uses a tri-axial accelerometer to detect impacts and monitor posture. This sensor is attached to a custom designed vest, designed to be worn by the elderly person under clothing. The fall detection algorithm was developed and incorporates both impact and posture detection capability. The vest and fall algorithm was tested by two teams of 5 elderly subjects who wore the sensor system in turn for 2 week each and were monitored for 8 hours a day. The system previously achieved sensitivity of >90% and a specificity of >99%, using young healthy subjects performing falls and normal activities of daily living (ADL). In this study, over 833 hours of monitoring was performed over the course of the four weeks from the elderly subjects, during normal daily activity. In this time no actual falls were recorded, however the system registered a total of the 42 fall-alerts however only 9 were received at the care taker site. A fall detection system incorporated into a custom designed garment has been developed which will help reduce the incidence of the long-lie, when falls occur in the elderly population. However further development is required to reduce the number of false-positives and improve the transmission of messages.

Human fall detection is a critical research area focused on developing methods and systems that can automatically detect and recognize falls, particularly among the elderly and individuals with disabilities. Falls are a major cause of injuries and deaths among these populations, and timely intervention can reduce the severity of consequences. This article presents a comprehensive review of fall detection systems, emphasizing the use of cutting-edge technologies such as deep learning, sensor fusion, and machine learning. The research explores a variety of methodologies and strategies employed in fall detection systems, including the integration of wearable sensors, smartphones, and cameras. By examining various fall detection techniques and their experimental results, the article highlights the effectiveness of these systems in identifying and classifying falls. The study also addresses the challenges and limitations associated with fall detection systems, emphasizing the need for ongoing research and advancements. In summary, this research contributes to the development of advanced fall detection systems, demonstrating their potential to improve the quality of life for the elderly, alleviate healthcare burdens, and provide reliable solutions for fall detection and classification.

A first-aid system is proposed for monitoring elderly patients who risk falling based on fall detection system (FDs) and for providing the first aid kit from an emergency call centre (ECC) to them by using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). In previous studies, the measurement accuracy of falls and heart rate was not sufficiently accurate. In addition, determination of UAV delivery time is also crucial and can save lives. In this work, the proposed system aims to determine patient falls and accurately measure heart rate and reduce UAV delivery time to patients. The FDs was practically implemented based on heartbeat and accelerometer sensors, a microcontroller, a GSM module, and GPS. While, a UAV, a first aid kit, and Smartphone were adopted in an ECC. Falls were accurately detected based on elderly fall detection (EFD) algorithm. The result showed that the proposed FDs was succeeded in monitoring elderly patients’ vital signs with a fall detection accuracy of 99.11%. In addition, the UAV succeeded in all missions and arrived at the patient’s locations before the ambulance in urban areas, with an average time saving of 1.75 min. The proposed elderly first aid system outperformed previous systems presented in terms of fall detection and UAV arrival time.

Falls among older people remain a very important public healthcare issue. Every year over 11 million falls are registered in the U.S. alone. This paper presents a practical real time fall detection system running on a smartwatch (F2D). A decision module takes into account the rebound after the fall and the residual movement of the user, matching a detected fall pattern to an actual fall. The final decision of a fall event is taken based on the location of the user. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fall detection system which works on an independent smartwatch, being less stigmatizing for the end user. The fall detection algorithm has been tested by Fondation Suisse pour les Téléthèses (FST), the project partner who is responsible for the commercialization of our system. By analyzing real data of activities of daily life of elderly people, we are confident that F2D meets the demands of a reliable and easily extensible system. This paper highlights the innovative algorithm which takes into account the residual movement and the location of the user to increase the fall detection accuracy. By testing with real data we have a fall detection system ready to be deployed on the market.

As an essential subfield of context awareness, activity awareness, especially daily activity monitoring and fall detection, plays a significant role for elderly or frail people who need assistance in their daily activities. This study investigates the feature extraction and pattern recognition of surface electromyography (sEMG), with the purpose of determining the best features and classifiers of sEMG for daily living activities monitoring and fall detection. This is done by a serial of experiments. In the experiments, four channels of sEMG signal from wireless, wearable sensors located on lower limbs are recorded from three subjects while they perform seven activities of daily living (ADL). A simulated trip fall scenario is also considered with a custom-made device attached to the ankle. With this experimental setting, 15 feature extraction methods of sEMG, including time, frequency, time/frequency domain and entropy, are analyzed based on class separability and calculation complexity, and five classification methods, each with 15 features, are estimated with respect to the accuracy rate of recognition and calculation complexity for activity monitoring and fall detection. It is shown that a high accuracy rate of recognition and a minimal calculation time for daily activity monitoring and fall detection can be achieved in the current experimental setting. Specifically, the Wilson Amplitude (WAMP) feature performs the best, and the classifier Gaussian Kernel Support Vector Machine (GK-SVM) with Permutation Entropy (PE) or WAMP results in the highest accuracy for activity monitoring with recognition rates of 97.35% and 96.43%. For fall detection, the classifier Fuzzy Min-Max Neural Network (FMMNN) has the best sensitivity and specificity at the cost of the longest calculation time, while the classifier Gaussian Kernel Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis (GK-FDA) with the feature WAMP guarantees a high sensitivity (98.70%) and specificity (98.59%) with a short calculation time (65.586 ms), making it a possible choice for pre-impact fall detection. The thorough quantitative comparison of the features and classifiers in this study supports the feasibility of a wireless, wearable sEMG sensor system for automatic activity monitoring and fall detection.

Elderly are the world’s largest growing population, categorized over the age of 60 to 65 years. They are the ones who prone to fall due to their old age and low self-efficacy, thus making them vulnerable to different accidents. Even doing daily activities can also expose the elderly to a fall incident. As a result, it has gained the attention of many researchers in conducting studies related to the elderly daily health care, especially in relation to the fall detection system. This paper aims to provide a systematic review on the classification of fall detection systems for the elderly. This systematic review is designed based on the existing and extensive literature review on fall detection systems guided by the prisma statement (preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses) review method. Based on this systematic review, four overarching themes that provide in-depth information on fall detection to detect fall events have been identified; classification of fall detection, basis development, type of sensor and detection technique. In a nutshell, the fall detection approach has successfully provided an alternative health care services for elderly who choose to live independently. Therefore, it is important to continue to develop a fall detection system that integrates with technology in order to provide a safe living environment for elderly, and for children, it can offer as an alternative for monitoring systems.

The machine learning revolution is redesigning modern healthcare, and with the growth of the elderly population, fall detection has become an important research topic in healthcare. This paper surveys advances in machine learning-based fall detection technologies and reviews sensor-based, image processing-based, and wearable sensor-based fall detection systems and applications. In addition, this paper proposes a self-learning posture analysis and eye status-based fall detection system to solve the issue of mis-detections in fall detection systems, which have not been addressed in past works. Furthermore, this work proposes an image-feature-separation system that can use image processing with a low risk of privacy disclosure. Moreover, this work establishes a dataset, which includes 36 non-fall/fall cases comprising 25,200 images that can be used not only for this research but also in related studies. Experimental results show that this system can detect a fall with high accuracy and solve mis-detections in machine learning-based fall detection systems.

Accidental falls are a major source of loss of autonomy, deaths, and injuries among the elderly. Accidental falls also have a remarkable impact on the costs of national health systems. Thus, extensive research and development of fall detection and rescue systems are a necessity. Technologies related to fall detection should be reliable and effective to ensure a proper response. This article provides a comprehensive review on state-of-the-art fall detection technologies considering the most powerful deep learning methodologies. We reviewed the most recent and effective deep learning methods for fall detection and categorized them into three categories: Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based systems, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) based systems, and Auto-encoder based systems. Among the reviewed systems, three dimensional (3D) CNN, CNN with 10-fold cross-validation, LSTM with CNN based systems performed the best in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, etc. The reviewed systems were compared based on their working principles, used deep learning methods, used datasets, performance metrics, etc. This review is aimed at presenting a summary and comparison of existing state-of-the-art deep learning based fall detection systems to facilitate future development in this field.

We report about a fall-detection sensor system that detects the beginning of a fall. The fall-detection sensor system monitors the human pulse as a vital sign, acceleration, and angular velocity. The fall-detection algorithm using these signals enables us to detect the beginning of a fall correctly. Especially, the fall detection algorithm using the vital sign was able to distinguish between a case in which persons did not fall down due to keep their balance although the fall began and a case in which persons fell.

This paper defines two major data sets 1) from wearable inertial measurement sensors and 2) wearable ECG SHIMMER™ sensors. The first dataset is devised to benchmark techniques dealing with human behavior analysis based on multimodal inertial measurement wearable SHIMMER™ sensors unit during research studies “Fall Detection System for the Elderly Based on the Classification of Shimmer Sensor Prototype Data” [2] and “A novel fall detection algorithm for elderly using SHIMMER wearable sensors” [3]. The SHIMMER inertial sensor is a lightweight sensing device, incorporated with tri-axial accelerometer, a tri-axial gyroscope and tri-axial magnetometer, mounted on the waist of the subjects. The second dataset is developed to assess the feasibility of using SHIMMER™ wearable third generation ECG sensors for identification of basic heart anomalies by remote ECG analysis. The experimental protocol was carried out according to the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test [1], which is mainly used in fall detection and fall risk assessment systems specially designed for elderly. Three daily life activities such as standing still, walking and sitting on chair and getup were performed along with fall activity in controlled environment. This dataset is available on Data in Brief Dataverse [4] and a data repository [5].

Falls pose a significant risk for the elderly population, often resulting in serious injuries and decreased quality of life. Accurate and effective fall detection systems can play an important role in reducing these risks. This study conducts a comparative analysis of the performance of PySpark and Scikit-Learn libraries in the development of fall detection models. PySpark offers a distributed computing environment specifically designed for big data processing, while Scikit-Learn is a Python-based library widely used for data analysis and machine learning. Five popular machine learning algorithms, including logistic regression, gradient boosting classifier, random forest, support vector machine, and Decision Tree, were used to build fall detection models using both PySpark and Scikit-Learn. Models were evaluated using a comprehensive set of measurements including accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and confusion matrix. In addition to the five popular machine learning algorithms included in the study, 26 different features were extracted from the Sisfall dataset, one of the most comprehensive fall and daily life activity datasets, in five main categories: basic statistical features, frequency domain features, time series features, motion features, and relational features. These features were incorporated into fall detection models to improve their ability to accurately identify falls. The findings reveal that both PySpark and Scikit-Learn provide strong and effective results in fall detection. Logistic regression emerged as the best performing algorithm in both libraries, achieving the highest accuracy rates. However, PySpark exhibited slightly longer training times compared to Scikit-Learn, which performed better in testing. Ultimately, this study will benefit researchers and practitioners involved in the development of robust and effective fall detection systems, thereby enabling improved safety and well-being for the elderly population. Additionally, it contributes to the literature by presenting a comprehensive feature extraction methodology for fall detection, which has not been explored extensively in previous research works.

Older adults face increased health risks, especially accidental injuries such as falls, which are one of the top ten causes of death in this age group. To address these changes, recent innovations have focused on developing advanced monitoring technologies to detect and prevent accidents in real time. Among these, fall detection systems have emerged as a critical area of research. This study aimed to evaluate the ability of millimeter-wave (mmWave) sensors to accurately detect multiple falls in the presence of large obstacles in a large, real-world indoor space. The mmWave sensors employed the Doppler effect to capture a human body’s point cloud and track its center point to estimate body position and identify fall events. A 12 $$\times$$ 12 meter indoor test area was established for the trials. The mmWave system’s accuracy was validated with video ground truth. Multiple sensors and azimuth tests were conducted to optimize radar configurations. 10 participants performed multiple human fall detection trials under 10 different scenarios. We have successfully validated the mmWave system with the video ground truth. In fall detection testing, the mmWave system achieved an overall accuracy of 97.9% across 10 multi-person scenarios. The results show that the system’s fall detection false negative rate increases with the number of subjects. This study validated the performance of a mmWave system for fall detection in a large indoor environment, demonstrating a high accuracy of 97.9% in a multi-person scenario. However, performance varied with crowd density, showing a correlation between increased false negative rates and the number of subjects due to occlusion. This study supports that mmWave technology offers good capabilities for fall accident monitoring in large indoor spaces with both privacy protection and convenience. IRB Registry: Institutional Review Board of the Chang Gung Medical Foundation, Approval No.: 202500191B0, Registration date: 3 March 2025.

Falling is among the most damaging event elderly people may experience. With the ever-growing aging population, there is an urgent need for the development of fall detection systems. Thanks to the rapid development of sensor networks and the Internet of Things (IoT), human-computer interaction using sensor fusion has been regarded as an effective method to address the problem of fall detection. In this paper, we provide a literature survey of work conducted on elderly fall detection using sensor networks and IoT. Although there are various existing studies which focus on the fall detection with individual sensors, such as wearable ones and depth cameras, the performance of these systems are still not satisfying as they suffer mostly from high false alarms. Literature shows that fusing the signals of different sensors could result in higher accuracy and lower false alarms, while improving the robustness of such systems. We approach this survey from different perspectives, including data collection, data transmission, sensor fusion, data analysis, security, and privacy. We also review the benchmark data sets available that have been used to quantify the performance of the proposed methods. The survey is meant to provide researchers in the field of elderly fall detection using sensor networks with a summary of progress achieved up to date and to identify areas where further effort would be beneficial.