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A Wearable Auto-balance Device to Prevent Falling for People with Balancing Dysfunctions

CSEF · 2023 Electronics & Electromagnetics Fourth Award

Bhatt Krishna · 8

Overview

Falling is a widespread cause of severe injuries across the world. Over three million elderlies are treated in emergency departments annually for fall injuries in the U.S. alone. The goal of my project is to make individuals with balance dysfunctions less prone to falls by utilizing the method of adjusting their center of mass when they lose their balance. My prototype is a device that the user wears throughout the day on their body. It contains an Arduino UNO, servo motors, a gyroscope, a speaker, an LCD, and weights. When the gyroscope detects that the user’s body inclination is greater than five degrees, the motors use a shaft to move a 2.25 kg weight in the opposite direction of their incline and re-adjust their center of mass to maintain balance. I later added Bluetooth capabilities to connect the prototype to a smartphone application to give users more insights into their walking patterns and an automatic emergency call function when they fall. The prototype successfully fulfilled all design criteria by accurately detecting the incline, completing rotation of the weights in under two seconds, having a gyroscopic drift of less than 3 degrees, and having a fall rate 70.5% lower than without the device for even angles from 6 to 20 degrees. This project also overcame constraints of budget and materials. This project has the scope to significantly reduce falling rates if certain changes outside my budget were made to commercialize it.

Source coverage

This record comes from a published award list, not a complete project archive. Its abstract comes from CSEF's public project showcase as archived by the Internet Archive before judging (https://web.archive.org/web/20230401224130/https://ca-csef.zfairs.com/showcase/ShowcaseInfo?f=838e60b7-ea75-46e8-865c-fde4864244b3); the version presented may differ.

Awards (1)

Competition history

  • CSEF 2023 Electronics & Electromagnetics · Entry J1007

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