MultiSense: A Highly Reliable Wearable-Free Fall Detection System

Professor Zhang and his team have developed A reliable fall detection system has tremendous value to the well-being of seniors living alone. We design and implement MultiSense, a novel fall detection system, which has the following desirable features. First, it does not require the human to wear any device, therefore convenient to seniors. Second, it has been tested in typical settings including living rooms and bathrooms, and has shown very good accuracy. Third, it is built with inexpensive components, with expected hardware cost around $150 to cover a typical room. Therefore, it has a key advantage over the current commercial fall detection systems which all require the human to wear some device, as well as over academic research prototypes which have various limitations such as lower accuracy. The high accuracy is achieved mainly by combining senses from multiple types of sensors that complement each other, which includes a motion sensor, a heat sensor, and a floor vibration sensor. Roughly speaking, the activities confusing to some sensors are often not confusing to others, and vice versa; therefore, combining multiple types of sensors can bring the performance to a level that can meet the requirements in practice.