Bed exiting monitoring system with fall detection for the elderly living alone

A bed exiting monitoring system with fall detection function for the elderly living alone is proposed in this paper. By separating the process of exiting or getting on the bed into several significant movements, the sensor system composed of infrared and pressure sensors attached to the bed will correspondingly respond to these movements. Using the finite state machine (FSM) method, the bed exiting state and fall events can be detected according to specific transitions recognized by the sensor system. Experiments with plausible assessment are conducted to find the optimal sensor combination solution and to verify the FSM algorithm, which is demonstrated feasible and effective in practical use.