WARE-Care: a novel RF-based system to assess and prevent falling

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Project Summary/Abstract Many falls in nursing facilities are not reported during night when older adults are alone. It can lead to reduced quality of life, increased fear of falling and restriction of activities, decreased ability to function, and increased risk of injuries or death. We propose WARE-Care: mmWave based fall Assessment and pRevEntion, as a non-intrusive system to work during the night to collect and assess older adults’ falling data. WARE-Care will provide an accurate measurement of movement and be compact and easy to set up. The system is safe, private, and user-friendly for nursing facility applications. The system is of strong interest to the nursing centers, including the local Handmaker Jewish Services For Aging center. The WARE-Care system is novel and unique and is based on the PI’s developments in mmWave radar combined with advanced machine learning techniques. The new field of mmWave radar opens opportunities for elders monitoring with significant advantages that complement existing visual and body-worn sensors. mmWave radar operates in all lighting conditions and generates a point cloud that can be used to accurately create a skeleton while respecting privacy, e.g. no detailed facial information will be collected. The non-touch, non-obtrusive sensor can be preferred to battery limited and potentially irritating body worn sensors during sleeping hours for elders. We will first build and verify the proposed system in different rooms including a typical restroom and bedroom in the nursing home. We will then apply new neural-network based methods to recover accurate skeleton movement and detect abnormal behavior of people regardless of age, sex, weight, or height. We will first recruit a group of healthy adults (18 or older) for setting up and training the proposed system. The system will further be validated on a targeted older group (65 and older), and be compared with wearable motion sensors. An interdisciplinary team has been assembled to develop and perform initial clinical validation of this novel system.