Airbag System for Elderly People Fall Protection with Proactive Safety Measures

Elderly people are the major victims of head injuries and deaths that occur due to falling. Falls are an important concern, specifically among the elder people, as they often lead to serious injuries and a decline in overall quality of life. Various methods exist to detect, prevent, and protect aged people from these accidents. All the existing technologies mainly deal with fall detection and alerting. However, fall protection can greatly help aged people more than detection. One promising solution is the development of wearable airbag systems that can provide rapid and effective protection when a fall is detected. In this paper, a mechanism for detecting falls was developed, and a wearable airbag system was built for protection. The main objective of this paper is to develop a protection and alert system using airbags for senior citizens. This system can be mounted onto a waist belt in the form of an airbag. It is wirelessly linked to the senior individual’s mobile device, where an Android application has been designed to receive alert notifications from the system. The fall detection is carried out by a gravity sensor connected to an Arduino board. When the gravity sensor identifies a fall, the system will trigger an air valve to inflate the airbag from the air tank. Additionally, the system utilizes three types of health inputs, including heart rate, temperature, and a force sensor, to transmit data through the Arduino microcontroller.