Cluster-Analysis-Based User-Adaptive Fall Detection Using Fusion of Heart Rate Sensor and Accelerometer in a Wearable Device

This paper proposes an automatic fall detector in a wearable device that can reduce risks by detecting falls and promptly alerting caregivers. For this purpose, we propose cluster-analysis-based user-adaptive fall detection using a fusion of heart rate sensor and accelerometer. The objectives of the proposed fall detector are to have high accuracy with a low-complexity model regardless of diverse conditions. To meet the objectives, we propose the best 13-dimensional feature subset by using feature selection. In addition, we verify the performance increment of combining a heart rate sensor with an accelerometer and the effectiveness of the cluster-analysis-based anomaly detection. We also show the effectiveness of the user-adaptive method when using both heart rate and acceleration signals that were hardly covered in other papers. Finally, we prove that the performance of the proposed fall detector achieves is better than that of recent user-adaptive and user-independent approaches. This study is the first attempt to demonstrate the merits of the user-adaptive approach using a combination of heart rate and acceleration signals to detect falls. Moreover, this paper also contributes to fall detection area by providing the data we collected.