KR20170004269A - Apparatus and method for fall-down detection - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a fall detection apparatus and method for detecting a fall accident frequently occurred in real life in an elderly person or a pedestrian who is inconvenient in motion and reporting it to a fall control server to positively prepare for a second accident caused by a fall An acceleration sensor that detects acceleration and tilt information of a user, a specific action is determined using acceleration and tilt information extracted from the acceleration sensor, and a continuous pattern of the determined actions is analyzed to determine whether or not to fall And a communication unit for notifying occurrence of a fall to a designated place when a fall is determined by the control unit and the control unit.

Description

[0001] APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR FALL-DOWN DETECTION [0002]

More particularly, the present invention relates to a fall detection apparatus and a method thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a fall detection apparatus and a method thereof, and more particularly to a fall detection apparatus and a method thereof that detect fall accidents occurring frequently in real life for an elderly person or an uncomfortable pedestrian, The present invention relates to a fall detection apparatus and a method thereof for positively preparing for a car accident.

As the society rapidly progresses into an aging society, a variety of healthcare services are emerging that help elderly people and pedestrians who are uncomfortable to run their daily life with peace of mind.

Especially, the elderly who live alone like the elderly living alone often have accidents caused by falls because they have more time to live alone like elderly living alone. Therefore, various fall relief services Has been in the limelight, and research on this has been actively proceeding.

However, the conventional technology for the fall structure has problems such as an increase in battery consumption, an increase in fall detection error, and a reduction in filtering efficiency for error detection since the sensor and the mobile phone are separated and transmit data wirelessly. (A user wearing or pulling a sensor, shaking with a hand, jumping or hitting a sensor), which is similar to a fall sensor, There is a problem of judging by falling.

Accordingly, in order to accurately measure whether or not a fall occurs, rather than determining whether a fall occurs in real time using data currently measured, it is necessary to accurately determine fall and similar actions by determining not only measurement data determined as a fall, And to provide a fall detection apparatus and a method that can be judged based on the determination result.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a fall detection apparatus and method capable of preventing a secondary damage that may be caused by a fall by informing a guardian or an emergency center using communication means provided integrally with the fall detection unit do.

In order to achieve the above object, the fall sensing apparatus of the present invention includes an acceleration sensor for sensing acceleration and tilt information, a specific action is determined using acceleration and tilt information extracted from the acceleration sensor, And a communicator for transmitting fall occurrence information when the fall is determined by the controller.

The controller may store the acceleration and slope information extracted from the acceleration sensor in a data queue, store the data in the data queue at a predetermined time interval, and store the data in an action queue. A predetermined number of action values are fetched from the action queue at intervals and compared with a predefined action column pattern to decide whether to fall. In this case, the acceleration sensor may be a three-axis acceleration sensor.

Further, the fall sensing apparatus according to the present invention may further include a GPS unit for detecting current position information, and the controller transmits current position information through the communication unit as a fall occurrence notification.

Meanwhile, the fall sensing apparatus according to the present invention further includes an output unit for outputting a fall determination signal when the fall is determined by the control unit, and a button unit for inputting a signal for confirming absence of fall by the user. In this case, the button unit further includes a emergency button for inputting a signal indicating an emergency by the user.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a fall detection method comprising: detecting acceleration and tilt information; determining a specific behavior using the sensed acceleration and tilt information; Determining whether or not to fall, and transmitting fall occurrence information according to the determination of whether to fall or not.

The method may further include detecting current position information.

The step of determining the specific action may include storing the acceleration and tilt information in a data queue, loading a predetermined number of data in the data queue at predetermined time intervals, and determining a specific action using the loaded data And storing it in an action queue.

The step of determining whether or not to fall includes determining a predetermined number of behavior values from an action queue at predetermined time intervals and comparing the behavior values with a predefined behavioral pattern to determine whether to fall.

The fall detection method may further include outputting a notification signal regarding the fall determination and canceling the fall determination through a button input by the user in response to the notification signal regarding the fall determination.

As described above, the fall detection apparatus and method according to the present invention are capable of promptly detecting a fall occurring in an elderly person or an inconvenient person and informing it of a fall, thereby positively preparing for unexpected accident caused by a fall.

In addition, the apparatus and method for detecting a fall according to the present invention can accurately detect whether or not a fall occurs by using an after-fall behavior for falling detection, and solve various problems that may occur in a detection error.

In addition, the fall detection apparatus and method according to the present invention can reduce a mistake of a falling error and prepare for an emergency situation through a function that can be canceled by a user for false fall detection and a function for manually informing an emergency situation have.

FIG. 1 is a view showing a concept of a system for detecting falls according to the present invention.
2 is a view showing a configuration of a fall detection apparatus according to the present invention.
3 is a diagram showing data of a three-axis acceleration sensor according to the present invention.
4 is a diagram showing the result of LPF (Low Pass Filter) of the data of FIG.
5 is a diagram showing the result of HPF (High Pass Filter) of the data of FIG.
6 is a view showing a fall detection method according to the present invention.
7 is a diagram showing a configuration of a fall control server according to the present invention.
8 is a flowchart showing the operation of the fall control server according to the present invention.

Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the following description of the present invention, a detailed description of known functions and configurations incorporated herein will be omitted when it may make the subject matter of the present invention rather unclear.

FIG. 1 is a view showing a concept of a system for detecting falls according to the present invention.

In order to detect a fall and inform the doctor, emergency center and family members of an emergency in order to prevent secondary damage that may occur in a fall, the present invention includes a fall detection device 10 mounted on a user and detecting whether a fall occurs, And a fall control server 30 for receiving a fall occurrence or not and notifying a third party of the occurrence of a fall is connected to the wireless communication 20.

1 illustrates an example in which a fall sensing apparatus 10 for detecting a user's fall is mounted on the user's waist. Determines whether or not a fall occurs using acceleration, inclination, and current position information according to the user's movement, and notifies fall control server (30) through wireless communication (20) when it is determined that a fall has occurred. When the fall control server 30 receives the fall occurrence, it notifies the preset occurrence location of the user who has fallen. At this time, for the user who has fallen, the place that can be set in advance can be the contact of the family member, the designated hospital and doctor, the emergency center, and the like.

2 is a view showing a configuration of a fall detection apparatus according to the present invention.

The fall sensing apparatus 10 according to the present invention includes an input / output device such as an acceleration sensor 110, a GPS unit 120, a control unit 130, and a microphone / speaker 140, a button unit 150 and a communication unit 160 . Each constitution of the fall detection device 10 will be described in detail below.

The acceleration sensor 110 may be a variety of acceleration sensors capable of sensing acceleration information and tilt information. In the embodiment of the present invention, a three-axis acceleration sensor can be used. The three-axis acceleration sensor senses the three-axis acceleration information and the tilt information according to the user's motion.

The GPS unit 120 senses the current position information of the fall sensing apparatus 10. [ The current position information detected by the GPS unit 120 is transmitted to the family through the fall control server 30 via the communication unit 160 as fall information when it is determined that a fall occurs.

The controller 130 determines whether or not a fall event has occurred using the acceleration information and the slope information detected by the acceleration sensor 110. The controller 130 finally verifies the fall occurrence to the user through the speaker 140, (30) to notify the user of the fall, and ultimately delivers a message to the family, doctor, emergency center, and the emergency situation caused by the fall.

The control unit 130 includes an acceleration information extracting unit 131, a fall behavior determining unit 132, a position information extracting unit 133, a fall determining unit 134, and an input / output processing unit 135.

The acceleration information extracting unit 131 extracts the acceleration and tilt information of the user sensed by the acceleration sensor 110 such as a three-axis acceleration sensor. Generally, the three-axis acceleration sensor measures the raw data as shown in FIG. 3, which includes both the acceleration acceleration component due to the acceleration / deceleration during walking and the action and the gravity acceleration component due to the tilt.

At this time, since the motion acceleration component is located in the high frequency component in the frequency domain and the gravity acceleration component is located in the low frequency component, the acceleration information extraction section 131 extracts the motion acceleration values Ax, Ay, Az using HPF (High Pass Filter) , And extracts gravitational acceleration values (Tx, Ty, Tz) using an LPF (Low Pass Filter). For example, FIG. 4 shows a signal obtained by extracting a gravitational acceleration component from FIG. 3 using an LPF (Low Pass Filter), and FIG. 5 shows a signal obtained by extracting a motion acceleration component from FIG. 3 using an HPF (High Pass Filter).

The fall behavior determiner 132 determines whether the fall occurs at a predetermined interval using the acceleration and slope information extracted from the acceleration information extractor 131. [ The method of determining the fall behavior in the fall behavior determination unit 132 is performed by the fall detection algorithm of FIG.

First, the acceleration sensor 110 continuously measures the acceleration and tilt information of the user (S610)

When the acceleration sensor 110 detects the acceleration and the tilt, the acceleration information extracting unit 131 extracts the acceleration and tilt information through the acceleration information extracting unit 131 at a predetermined time interval (for example, 100 ms) (Not shown). Here, the acceleration information is extracted and stored as a motion acceleration component and a gravity acceleration component (S620)

The falling behavior determiner 132 determines the behavior using a predetermined number of data (for example, 20) stored in the data queue at a predetermined time interval (for example, 200 ms) and stores the data in an action queue (S630). Specifically, the falling behavior determining unit 132 analyzes the data fetched from the data queue and determines an action corresponding to the data.

At this time, the action judgment is performed by using 20 data stored in the data queue, and the inclination and acceleration values corresponding to the x, y and z axes of the 20 data, whether or not these values exceed a predetermined threshold value, A change amount of time before / after the acceleration, whether or not the change amount exceeds a threshold value, and the like are used. In this case, the time variation means a change in values before / after relative to the current tilt / acceleration. For example, assume that the acceleration at the current point is 10, the previous three accelerations are 1, 3, and 6, and the subsequent three accelerations are 4, 1, 0. (2 * A1 + 3 * A2 + 4 * A3) of the acceleration differences of the previous time (3-1 = 2, 6-3 = 3, 10-6 = 4) at each time point, (6 * B1 + 3 * B2 + 1 * B3) of the acceleration differences (10-4 = 6,4-1 = 3,1-0 = 1) at each time point. The weights A and B in the weighted sum are inversely proportional to the time difference from the current time point, which is the weighted value that decreases as the distance from the current point increases. The decision model for judging the behavior in the input data is constructed using the decision tree method which is a widely used machine learning machine.

The action judgment information stored in the action queue by the fall behavior judging unit 132 is information on a temporary action at a predetermined time interval (for example, 200 ms), and is not a final judgment as to whether or not the player falls. These temporary activities include, for example, sitting, lying down, walking, running, standing, sitting, lying down, getting up, falling.

The final decision as to whether or not the fall occurs is determined by analyzing the continuous pattern of the actions stored in the action queue. (S640) To this end, a certain number of actions in the action queue (for example, 10), and finally determines the fall by comparison with a predefined behavior pattern.

The final judgment process of the fall or not can be made more reliable than the judgment of the fall of the present time in real time.

Examples of predefined action rows can be set in various ways, such as (*, falling,?, Lying, lying), (*, falling,?,?, Lying, lying). In this case, '*' means a pattern in which an arbitrary action occurs irrespective of the number, and? Denotes a pattern in which an arbitrary action occurs once.

For example, when there is a pattern of behavior such as walking (walking, walking, falling, walking, walking), there is an overturning behavior, However, it can be confirmed that the walking action continues. In such a case, a fall (fall) occurred, but the fall is ignored and the fall is ignored. Another example is that when there is a row of patterns such as (walking, falling, sitting, lying, lying), there is a 'sitting' after the falling, , And falls.

When the fall behavior is finally determined by comparing the behavior pattern of the fall behavior determiner 132, the fall occurrence information is transmitted to the fall determination unit 134. [

The position information extracting unit 133 extracts the current position information of the fall sensing apparatus 10, that is, the current position information of the user, from the GPS unit 120 at a predetermined time interval (for example, 1 sec) (Not shown) in the memory.

When falling occurs, the fall determining unit 134 causes the speaker 140 to generate an alarm regarding fall occurrence through the input / output processing unit 135. If the signal from the OK button 152 of the button unit 150 is not delivered even after a predetermined time has elapsed after the alarm has been generated, the fall determining unit 134 determines that a fall has occurred to the user, And transmits the fall information of the user to the control server 30. The fall information transmitted here includes position information of the user stored in the memory by the position information extracting unit 133. [

However, when the user presses the OK button 152 to transmit a signal, it is determined that the user does not have an emergency fall, and the fall determination unit 134 transmits the fall information of the user to the fall control server 30 Do not.

When the fall control server 30 receives the fall information of the user from the fall detection device 10, the drop control server 30 calls the user to check again whether or not the fall occurs, and the telephone receive sound is outputted through the microphone / speaker 140. When the user presses the OK button 152, the signal is transmitted to the fall determining unit 134 through the input / output processing unit 135, and the fall determining unit 134 receives the signal from the OK button of the user It then cancels the Falling Warning status and stops alarms and ring tones at the same time.

However, if the user has not pressed the OK button for the incoming call from the fall control server 30, the user finally transmits a detection message informing the emergency to the family, doctors, and emergency centers set for the user.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, in addition to the automatic fall detection, the fall detection apparatus 10 can notify the emergency situation manually through the emergency button 151 when the user wishes to inform the emergency situation. When the user presses the emergency button 151, the fall determination unit 134 transmits the emergency signal to the fall determination server 134 through the input / output processing unit 135, And transmits an emergency signal to the terminal. At this time, the fall control server 30 manually delivers the emergency message to the family set for the user as described above.

However, in case of manually informing the emergency situation, the fall determining unit 134 outputs an alarm sound to the microphone / speaker 140 through the input / output processing unit 135, The fall control server 30 can again call the fall detection device 10 and cancel the emergency situation according to the OK button 152 signal. This method can be performed in the same manner as described above.

The fall sensing apparatus 10 includes a communication unit including a wireless modem function such as WCDMA, GSM, and CDMA to perform communication with the fall control server 30. [

7 is a diagram showing a configuration of a fall control server according to the present invention.

In response to the fall occurrence signal transmitted from the fall detection device 10, the fall control server 30 delivers a danger such as a fall to a predetermined family, doctor, emergency center, or the like.

The fall control server 30 includes a fall information receiving unit 310, a user confirmation unit 320, a fall information database 330, and a fall notification unit 340.

The fall information receiving unit 310 receives fall information from the fall detection device 10. The received fall information includes the user's final fall occurrence information, the user's current position information as well as the user's personal information.

The user confirmation unit 320 searches the fall information database 330 using the personal information of the user to confirm the identity of the user.

The fall information database 330 stores information such as user's personal information, that is, personal status information by user's personal number, health information, and notified contact information at the time of a fall.

The fall notification unit 340 notifies the fall notification to the corresponding fall notification contact when the user is confirmed by the user confirmation unit 320.

8 is a flowchart showing the operation of the fall control server according to the present invention. Since the specific embodiment of the fall control server 30 is as described above, the operation process thereof will be briefly described.

First, fall information and fall-down information are received from the fall detection device 10 (S810). Here, the fall information and fall-down information include a fall occurrence information of a user, user personal information, and the like.

 When the fall information is received, the fall information database is searched using the personal protection of the received fall information, the identity of the user is confirmed, and at the same time, the alert contact is searched for at the user's fall (S810)

Finally, in step S830, the user is notified of the dropping of the user information by the notified contact information.

Meanwhile, the method of the present invention as described above can be written in a computer program. And the code and code segments constituting the program can be easily deduced by a computer programmer in the field. In addition, the created program is stored in a computer-readable recording medium (information storage medium), and is read and executed by a computer to implement the method of the present invention. And the recording medium includes all types of recording media readable by a computer.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made in the present invention without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. The present invention is not limited to the drawings.

Fall, Acceleration, Position, Accelerometer, GPS

Claims (11)

An acceleration sensor for sensing acceleration and tilt information;
A controller for determining a specific action using the acceleration and tilt information extracted from the acceleration sensor and analyzing a continuous pattern of the determined actions to determine whether to fall;
And a communication unit for transmitting fall occurrence information when the fall is determined by the control unit.
The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the control unit
And stores acceleration and tilt information extracted from the acceleration sensor in a data queue.
3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the control unit
Wherein the predetermined data is retrieved from the data queue at a predetermined time interval, and the data is stored in an action queue after a decision is made.
4. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein the control unit
Wherein a predetermined number of behavior values are fetched from the behavior queue at predetermined time intervals and compared with a predefined behavior pattern to determine whether a fall occurs.
The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the acceleration sensor is a three-axis acceleration sensor.
The method according to claim 1,
Further comprising a GPS unit for detecting current position information,
Wherein the control unit transmits the current position information through the communication unit as a fall occurrence notification.
The method according to claim 6,
An output unit for outputting a fall check signal when a fall is determined in the controller; And
Further comprising a button unit for inputting a signal for confirming no fall by the user.
The method according to claim 6,
Further comprising an urgent button for inputting a signal indicating an emergency by the user.
Sensing acceleration and tilt information;
Determining a specific action using the sensed acceleration and slope information;
Analyzing a consecutive pattern of the determined actions to determine whether to fall;
And transmitting fall occurrence information according to the determination of the fall or fall.
10. The method of claim 9,
Further comprising the step of detecting current position information.
10. The method of claim 9,
Storing the acceleration and tilt information in a data queue;
Loading a predetermined number of data from the data queue at predetermined time intervals;
Determining a specific action using the loaded data, and storing the determined action in an action queue.

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