An acoustic fall detector system that uses sound height information to reduce the false alarm rate

TLDR

More than one third of about 38 million adults 65 and older fall each year in the United States, and many current fall detection systems require wearable devices. The authors propose an acoustic fall detection system (FADE) that automatically signals a fall to a caregiver. The system uses an array of acoustic sensors to estimate sound source height, treating sounds from above 2 ft as false alarms, and was evaluated in a pilot study of 23 simulated falls by a trained stunt actor over 1.3 hours. Height-based filtering lowered the false alarm rate from 32 to 5 per hour while maintaining 100 % fall detection.

Abstract

More than one third of about 38 million adults 65 and older fall each year in the United States. To address the above problem we propose to develop an acoustic fall detection system (FADE) that will automatically signal a fall to the monitoring caregiver. As opposed to many existent fall detection systems that require the monitored person to wear devices such as accelerometers or gyroscopes at all times, our system is completely unobtrusive by not requiring any wearable devices. To reduce the false alarm rate we employ an array of acoustic sensors to obtain sound source height information. The sound is considered a false alarm if it comes from a source located at a height higher than 2 feet. We tested our system in a pilot study that consisted of a set of 23 falls performed by a stunt actor during six sessions of about 15 minutes each (1.3 hours in total). The actor was previously trained by our nursing collaborators to fall like an elderly person. The use of height information reduced the false alarm hourly rate from 32 to 5 at a 100% fall detection rate.