A Wearable Airbag to Prevent Fall Injuries

Abstract

We have developed a wearable airbag that incorporates a fall-detection system that uses both acceleration and angular velocity signals to trigger inflation of the airbag. The fall-detection algorithm was devised using a thresholding technique with an accelerometer and gyro sensor. Sixteen subjects mimicked falls, and their acceleration waveforms were monitored. Then, we developed a fall-detection algorithm that could detect signals 300 ms before the fall. This signal was used as a trigger to inflate the airbag to a capacity of 2.4 L. Although the proposed system can help to prevent fall-related injuries, further development is needed to miniaturize the inflation system.

HCI meets Material Science

“…Other advantages include their low production cost, high strength due to the large surface area over which they are able to absorb loads, and high reliability of deployment [28]. As a result, they have found their way into many applications including vehicle wheels, furniture, inflatable boats and buoyancy systems [81], airbags [23,233], membrane roofs [9,105,165], soft robotics [151,160,196,245,246], medical treatments [10,14,147,234] and for entertainment.…”

Observing the State of Balance with a Single Upper-Body Sensor

“…This would result in increased safety and independence of the elderly. Examples for such systems are the balance-assisting gyroscopic backpack (Li and Vallery, 2012), the hip orthosis (Giovacchini et al, 2014), and airbags to reduce fall injuries (Tamura et al, 2009).…”

Fall Detection and Prevention for the Elderly: A Review of Trends and Challenges

“…Tri-axial accelerometer TEMPO 3.0 sensor node [13,14] and placement Figure 5. Airbag based fall-detection system for preventing fall-related injuries [48] In [48], a wearable airbag has been developed that incorporates a fall-detection system using both acceleration and angular velocity signals to trigger airbag inflation, as shown in Figure 5 [48,49].…”