Falls are the leading cause of death due to injury among the elderly.

Getting help after an immobilizing fall improves the elderly person’s chance of survival by 80% and increases the likelihood of a return to independent living.

Personal story from Aubrie:

People without disabilities tend to take their safety for granted Most of the people in this room step into the shower without worrying about whether they’ll be able to get back out In the dorms at Stanford, I couldn’t make that assumption. I used to text my parents every time I was about to shower, and then I would text them afterwards Then used another method, Now I’m living at home while working at Google. One time, I fell when I wasn’t expecting it. Couldn’t reach my phone. Luckily, my mom was home and heard me call.

How it works

There are two types of users who will use an Accel: the trackee and the caregiver. The trackee wears the Accel device on her chest. The caregiver puts his phone number into a database. When the trackee falls, the Accel device logs the fall and will send a text message to the caregiver, and send a link to the google maps location the trackee is at.

The device has three modes: detection, countdown, and emergency. During the detection mode, Accel will detect when the trackee has fallen. Once it has detected the fall, it will go into the countdown mode. The device will beep and flash a green light for 30 seconds. If the trackee did not actually fall, she can cancel the countdown mode by pressing a button on the device, which will make the device go back to the detection mode. If the trackee did indeed fall, after 30 seconds, the device will automatically go into the emergency mode and send a message to the caregiver.

The Accel device is an Electric Imp 002 Development Board. We used the 3-axis accelerometer embedded in the board to sense when the human has fallen. We used the Twilio API to send a text message to the caregiver. We used the Google Webservice API to track where the trackee is at. The beeper and the button on the board are also used for the beeping and countdown cancellation function.

What's next for Accel

Creating an app for Accel (see mockup).

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