FATE: one step towards an automatic aging people fall detection service

Abstract

FATE is a project funded by the European Union under the program CIP/ICT-PSP with the main objective of organizing a big pilot on the automatic falls detection in aging people living at home. Automatic detection of falls is done in indoors and outdoors conditions, and in both cases the detection generates an alarm sent to a call center. The detection system is designed around a sensor sub-system based on accelerometers and gyroscopes able to detect falls with a high reliability. The complete system is based on a communications layer based in ZigBee and Bluetooth protocols. The gateway for sending the alarm to the call center is a mobile phone. Pilots are organized in three different countries (Spain, Italy and Ireland) where different models of health service and implemented call centers are available. Pilots duration will be one year, involving 175 users and one of the main final objectives is to gain experience with the integration of an automatic fall detection service in an already care/health existing service.