Fall detection system and a method of operating a fall detection system
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips N.V.
InventorWarner Rudolph Theophile Ten Kate
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An alarm (35) provided by a fall detection system (2) may be caused by an accidental drop of the system. Therefore prior to issuing the alarm the fall detection system a confirmation is needed that a potential fall originates from a fall detection system that is worn by a user (4). A fall of a fall detection system that is not attached to a user is characterized by the occurrence of one or more full rotations of the system. Said rotations are identified by analyzing the output signal of a magnetometer, and by detecting a periodicity in said output signal. The fall detection system (2) provides the alarm in dependence of an identified absence of at least one full rotation.
Claims19
A fall detection system comprising:
- one or more detectors that monitor movements of a user of the fall detection system, the one or more detectors including a magnetometer,
- an analysis element that is coupled to the one or more detectors and analyzes:
- at least one output of at least of the one or more detectors to detect a potential fall of the user;
- and
- an output signal of the magnetometer to detect at least one full rotation of at least 360 degrees of the magnetometer,
- wherein, upon detecting the potential fall of the user, the analysis element causes an alarm element to:
- issue an alarm when the at least one full rotation is not detected;
- and
- not issue the alarm when the at least one full rotation is detected.
A method comprising:
- analyzing, by a processing system, one or more sensor signals to identify a potential fall by a user of a fall detection system,
- analyzing, by the processing system, an output signal provided by a magnetometer of the fall detection system to detect the absence or presence of at least one full rotation of at least 360 degrees of the magnetometer, and
- in response to an identification of the potential fall:
- providing, by the processing system, an alarm in the absence of the at least one full rotation;
- and
- preventing, by the processing system, the alarm in the presence of the at least one full rotation.
A non-transitory computer-readable medium that includes a program that, when executed on a processor, causes the processor to:
- detect a potential fall by a user of a fall detection system, analyze an output signal provided by a magnetometer of the fall detection system to detect the absence or presence of at least one full rotation of at least 360 degrees of the magnetometer, and,
- in the event that the potential fall is defected and the at least one full rotation is not detected, the program causes the processor to issue an alarm, and
- in the event that the at least one full rotation is detected, the program prevents the processor from issuing the alarm.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.