Smart Fall Detection by Enhanced SVM with Fuzzy Logic Membership Function

Abstract

Falling is a critical issue for disabled people, and it leads to potentially serious injuries and death. Smart fall detection is a technology that depends on sensors and auxiliary devices that seek to improve the quality of life and enhance the lifestyle of disabled people. So far, the most widely used fall prediction methods collect data from inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors. In addition, they use thresholds to identify falls based on artificial experiences or machine learning (ML) algorithms. Nonetheless, these approaches still require extensive classification and calibration. In this paper, we suggest a new technique to detect falls by combining Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The FL model is built by using a fuzzy membership function along with the input dataset to obtain the intermediate output. Because combining these two algorithms is not an easy task, we leverage SVM with a kernel comprised of a fuzzy membership function and thus build a new model known as FSVM. Besides, the hyperplane of the SVM is used as the separating plane to replace the traditional threshold method for detecting falling Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) on a comprehensive dataset containing simulated falling ADLs, non-falling ADLs, and scripted ADLs, including falling ADLs and unscripted ADLs performed by volunteers with our designed device. The results show that no false-positive rate had been triggered, and 100% specificity was achieved for ADL. An overall accuracy of about 99.87% in detecting the fall function was obtained. Furthermore, the overall sensitivity of 100% with no false negative rate obtained was achieved by implementing the proposed method. The attained results validate that our introduced method can effectively learn from features extracted from a multiphase fall model.