journal article·2023-10-17Open access

Dataset and System Design for Orthopedic Walker Fall Detection and Activity Logging Using Motion Classification

Maxwell Huang, Antony Garcia

Applied Sciences· Volume 13· Issue 20

Abstract

An accurate, economical, and reliable device for detecting falls in persons ambulating with the assistance of an orthopedic walker is crucially important for the elderly and patients with limited mobility. Existing wearable devices, such as wristbands, are not designed for walker users, and patients may not wear them at all times. This research proposes a novel idea of attaching an internet-of-things (IoT) device with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor directly to an orthopedic walker to perform real-time fall detection and activity logging. A dataset is collected and labeled for walker users in four activities, including idle, motion, step, and fall. Classic machine learning algorithms are evaluated using the dataset by comparing their classification performance. Deep learning with a convolutional neural network (CNN) is also explored. Furthermore, the hardware prototype is designed by integrating a low-power microcontroller for onboard machine learning, an IMU sensor, a rechargeable battery, and Bluetooth wireless connectivity. The research results show the promise of improved safety and well-being of walker users.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Context-Aware Activity Recognition Systems · Non-Invasive Vital Sign Monitoring · Gait Recognition and Analysis

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Noble and Greenough School, Dedham, MA 02026, USA

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA

Campus Víctor Levi Sasso, Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, Panama City 0819-07289, Panama

Funding

Fulbright-SENACYT Scholarship

References (51)

Show source-provided references
1. (2023, September 18). WHO Ageing and Health. Available online: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-health.
2. Elderly fall detection systems: A literature survey10.3389/frobt.2020.00071 ↗
3. (2023, September 18). CDC Falls Are Leading Cause of Injury and Death in Older Americans, Available online: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/p0922-older-adult-falls.html.
4. Patient falls in hospitals: An increasing problem10.1016/j.gerinurse.2015.07.004 ↗
5. A Machine Learning Approach for Fall Detection and Daily Living Activity Recognition10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2906693 ↗
6. Gonzalez, A.G. (2023, September 18). Walker Fall Detection Dataset. Available online: https://www.kaggle.com/dsv/6493939.
7. A Movement Decomposition and Machine Learning-Based Fall Detection System Using Wrist Wearable Device10.1109/JSEN.2018.2829815 ↗
8. Majumder, S., Mondal, T., and Deen, M.J. (2017). Wearable Sensors for Remote Health Monitoring. Sensors, 17.10.3390/s17010130 ↗
9. A high reliability wearable device for elderly fall detection10.1109/JSEN.2015.2423562 ↗
10. Development of a wearable-sensor-based Fall Detection System
11. Physical human activity recognition using wearable sensors10.3390/s151229858 ↗
12. Sousa Lima, W., Souto, E., El-Khatib, K., Jalali, R., and Gama, J. (2019). Human activity recognition using inertial sensors in a smartphone: An overview. Sensors, 19.10.3390/s19143213 ↗
13. Cao, Y., Yang, Y., and Liu, W. (2012, January 29–31). E-FallD: A fall detection system using Android-based smartphone. Proceedings of the 2012 9th International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery, Chongqing, China.10.1109/FSKD.2012.6234271 ↗
14. Tsinganos, P., and Skodras, A. (2017, January 18–20). A smartphone-based fall detection system for the elderly. Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Image and Signal Processing and Analysis, Ljubljana, Slovenia.10.1109/ISPA.2017.8073568 ↗
15. A Smartphone-Enabled Fall Detection Framework for Elderly People in Connected Home Healthcare10.1109/MNET.001.1900100 ↗
16. Fall Detection Using Smartphone Audio Features10.1109/JBHI.2015.2425932 ↗
17. Wearable Camera- and Accelerometer-Based Fall Detection on Portable Devices10.1109/LES.2015.2487241 ↗
18. He, Y., Li, Y., and Bao, S.D. (2012, January 5–7). Fall detection by built-in tri-accelerometer of smartphone. Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics, Hong Kong, China.
19. Rakhman, A.Z., Nugroho, L.E. (2014, January 8). Fall detection system using accelerometer and gyroscope based on smartphone. Proceedings of the 2014 The 1st International Conference on Information Technology, Computer, and Electrical Engineering, Semarang, Indonesia.10.1109/ICITACEE.2014.7065722 ↗
20. Fung, N.M., Wong Sing Ann, J., Tung, Y.H., Seng Kheau, C., and Chekima, A. (2019, January 27–28). Elderly Fall Detection and Location Tracking System Using Heterogeneous Wireless Networks. Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE 9th Symposium on Computer Applications & Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE), Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.10.1109/ISCAIE.2019.8743664 ↗
21. Tsinganos, P., and Skodras, A. (2018). On the comparison of wearable sensor data fusion to a single sensor machine learning technique in fall detection. Sensors, 18.10.3390/s18020592 ↗
22. Fall Detection in Homes of Older Adults Using the Microsoft Kinect10.1109/JBHI.2014.2312180 ↗
23. Diraco, G., Leone, A., and Siciliano, P. (2010, January 8–12). An active vision system for fall detection and posture recognition in elderly healthcare. Proceedings of the 2010 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE 2010), Dresden, Germany.10.1109/DATE.2010.5457055 ↗
24. Chen, W.H., and Ma, H.P. (2015, January 14–17). A fall detection system based on infrared array sensors with tracking capability for the elderly at home. Proceedings of the 2015 17th International Conference on E-health Networking, Application & Services (HealthCom), Boston, MA, USA.
25. Radar-based fall detection based on Doppler time-frequency signatures for assisted living10.1049/iet-rsn.2014.0250 ↗
26. Development of Home Intelligent Fall Detection IoT System Based on Feedback Optical Flow Convolutional Neural Network10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2771389 ↗
27. Lee, Y.S., and Lee, H. (2009, January 15–18). Multiple object tracking for fall detection in real-time surveillance system. Proceedings of the 2009 11th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, Gangwon, Republic of Korea.
28. Huang, Z., Liu, Y., Fang, Y., and Horn, B.K.P. (2018, January 21–24). Video-based Fall Detection for Seniors with Human Pose Estimation. Proceedings of the 2018 4th International Conference on Universal Village (UV), Boston, MA, USA.10.1109/UV.2018.8642130 ↗
29. A Microphone Array System for Automatic Fall Detection10.1109/TBME.2012.2186449 ↗
30. He, J., Bai, S., and Wang, X. (2017). An unobtrusive fall detection and alerting system based on Kalman filter and Bayes network classifier. Sensors, 17.10.3390/s17061393 ↗
31. Li, H., Shrestha, A., Fioranelli, F., Le Kernec, J., Heidari, H., Pepa, M., Cippitelli, E., Gambi, E., and Spinsante, S. (2017, January 13–15). Multisensor data fusion for human activities classification and fall detection. Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE SENSORS, Glassboro, NJ, USA.10.1109/ICSENS.2017.8234179 ↗
32. A wavelet-based approach to fall detection10.3390/s150511575 ↗
33. Casilari, E., Santoyo-Ramón, J.A., and Cano-García, J.M. (2017). Analysis of Public Datasets for Wearable Fall Detection Systems. Sensors, 17.10.3390/s17071513 ↗
34. Ojetola, O., Gaura, E., and Brusey, J. (2015, January 18–20). Data set for fall events and daily activities from inertial sensors. Proceedings of the 6th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference, Portland, OR, USA. MMSys’15.10.1145/2713168.2713198 ↗
35. Robust and Accurate Smartphone-Based Step Counting for Indoor Localization10.1109/JSEN.2017.2685999 ↗
36. Ordóñez, F.J., and Roggen, D. (2016). Deep Convolutional and LSTM Recurrent Neural Networks for Multimodal Wearable Activity Recognition. Sensors, 16.10.3390/s16010115 ↗
37. Link, J.B., Smith, P., Viol, N., and Wehrle, K. (2011, January 21–23). FootPath: Accurate map-based indoor navigation using smartphones. Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation, Guimaraes, Portugal.10.1109/IPIN.2011.6071934 ↗
38. A Handheld Inertial Pedestrian Navigation System with Accurate Step Modes and Device Poses Recognition10.1109/JSEN.2014.2363157 ↗
39. A Step Counting Algorithm for Smartphone Users: Design and Implementation10.1109/JSEN.2014.2377193 ↗
40. Ha, S., and Choi, S. (2016, January 24–29). Convolutional neural networks for human activity recognition using multiple accelerometer and gyroscope sensors. Proceedings of the 2016 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), Vancouver, BC, Canada.10.1109/IJCNN.2016.7727224 ↗
41. Zeng, M., Nguyen, L.T., Yu, B., Mengshoel, O.J., Zhu, J., Wu, P., and Zhang, J. (2014, January 6–7). Convolutional Neural Networks for human activity recognition using mobile sensors. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications and Services, Austin, TX, USA.10.4108/icst.mobicase.2014.257786 ↗
42. Chan, A.D.C., and Green, J.R. (2008, January 9–10). Smart Rollator Prototype. Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Workshop on Medical Measurements and Applications, Ottawa, ON, Canada.10.1109/MEMEA.2008.4543006 ↗
43. Fall Detection System on Smart Walker Based on Multisensor Data Fusion and SPRT Method10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3195674 ↗
44. Fall Detection and Prevention Control Using Walking-Aid Cane Robot10.1109/TMECH.2015.2477996 ↗
45. Warden, P., and Situnayake, D. (2019). Tinyml: Machine Learning with TensorFlow Lite on Arduino and Ultra-Low-Power Microcontrollers, O’Reilly Media.
46. Arduino (2023, September 18). Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense. Available online: https://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/arduino-nano-33-ble-sense.
47. Waqar, D.M., Gunawan, T.S., Morshidi, M.A., and Kartiwi, M. (2021, January 23–25). Design of a Speech Anger Recognition System on Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense. Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE 7th International Conference on Smart Instrumentation, Measurement and Applications (ICSIMA), Bandung, Indonesia.10.1109/ICSIMA50015.2021.9526323 ↗
48. Wardhany, V.A., Hidayat, A., Utami, S.W., and Bastiana, D.S. (2022, January 13–14). Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense Performance for Cough Detection by Using NN Classifier. Proceedings of the 2022 6th International Conference on Information Technology, Information Systems and Electrical Engineering (ICITISEE), Yogyakarta, Indonesia.10.1109/ICITISEE57756.2022.10057829 ↗
49. Trivedi, K., and Shroff, H. (2021, January 6–10). Identification of Deadliest Mosquitoes Using Wing Beats Sound Classification on Tiny Embedded System Using Machine Learning and Edge Impulse Platform. Proceedings of the 2021 ITU Kaleidoscope: Connecting Physical and Virtual Worlds (ITU K), Geneva, Switzerland.10.23919/ITUK53220.2021.9662116 ↗
50. Moon, G.B. (2023, September 18). Seeed Studio XIAO nRF52840 Sense-TinyML/TensorFlow Lite-IMU/Microphone-Bluetooth5. Available online: https://www.seeedstudio.com/Seeed-XIAO-BLE-Sense-nRF52840-p-5253.html.
51. BayesWitnesses (2023, September 18). Bayeswitnesses/m2cgen: Transform ML Models into a Native Code (Java, C, Python, Go, JavaScript, Visual Basic, C#, R, PowerShell, PHP, Dart, Haskell, Ruby, F#, Rust) with Zero Dependencies. Available online: https://github.com/BayesWitnesses/m2cgen.