Research SC Smart floor sensors detect human falls, footsteps By Licia Jackson, Editor
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magine being able to know instantly if your elderly father takes a fall inside your house, no matter where you are. You could be at work, at a ballgame or out shopping and a message would be sent to your cell phone if there’s a fall. The researchers of ASSET (Advanced Smart Systems and Evaluation Technologies LLC) have developed just such a system and have found several other applications for the technology, says Benjamin Davis, an engineer and researcher at the University of South Carolina. Now they are working to commercialize it. Davis began the project as an undergrad-
uate in civil engineering at USC, working with professor Juan Caicedo and Victor Hirth, a medical doctor. After earning a master’s at University of California-Berkeley, Davis returned to USC to work on a doctorate and picked up the research. Hirth is a geriatric medical doctor with Palmetto Health-USC Medical Group Senior Primary Care. “There are potential applications from health care to manufacturing,” Hirth said. “The research originated in health care, detecting human falls, but then it expanded to footstep detection, to know where someone is walking.” The project originated with a grant from
the Alzheimer’s Association to develop a smart home that would be able to detect a person falling. Other organizations involved were the National Science Foundation, University of South Carolina and the Veterans Administration Hospital System. Davis, Hirth and their team used wireless sensors developed by Intel. The sensors were placed on the floor to detect the vibrations made by different types of falls. The person in the home does not have to wear any kind of device; the signal is picked up by the floor system and transmitted to the receiving system. “The heart of the system is a set of algo-
DETECTING VIBRATIONS These graphs show the measured vibration in several different actions, all captured on a concrete floor. University of South Carolina engineer Benjamin Davis and his research team have developed a sensor array that can detect and differentiate vibrations caused by a person falling, footsteps and other sources. (Data/Benjamin T. Davis)
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A HUMAN FALL
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A BALL DROPPED
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10
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A HUMAN WALKING
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A HUMAN FOOTSTEP
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