Abstract
Falls can result in severe injuries and even mortality among individuals of all age groups. Hence, numerous wearable sensor-based fall monitoring systems are being developed to provide assistance. Fall detection and activity tracking have been partially successful using smartwatches, smartphones, and specialized devices. However, a comprehensive solution that combines sensor data from different brands in a single model and performs fall detection with high accuracy and at a satisfactory level has not been encountered. This study aims to bridge this research gap by combining data from two different brands of IMUs (inertial measurement units) that incorporate accelerometers, magnetometers, and gyroscopes, in order to create a hybrid dataset. To achieve accurate predictions on data from both brands, machine learning (ML) models were trained using ML algorithms. The first dataset was obtained from 14 volunteers using a commercially available activity tracking system called Motion Trackers Wireless (MTw). The second dataset was collected from 30 volunteers using a custom-designed Activity Tracking Device (ATD) specifically developed for detecting falls and daily-life activities. In both cases, the sensors from the respective brands were positioned on the waist to capture data related to falls and daily-life activities. The data was organized using a time-series style to reveal relational effect of the sequential falling data. During the modelling, ten different classifiers trained, and classification was performed on unseen data using the data splitting method. The Extra Tree algorithm emerged as the most successful model, achieving an accuracy of 99.54%, precision of 99.18%, recall of 99.79%, and an F-score of 99.49% on the hybrid dataset constructed from the MTw and ATD datasets. This study demonstrates hybrid dataset to create a successful system with high accuracy and low false alarm rates using inertial sensor data from various brands.