The elderly are vulnerable to falls. These accidents often can break their hips and the resulting hospital stays can lead to complications, such as infections and death. In fact, falls are responsible for 70% of accidental deaths in people 75 and older. To prevent this, I worked on a project to build an inflatable hip protector.
While standing, it can be worn as a belt. When when the characteristics of a fall are detected using internal accelerometers, air canisters are triggered to inflate the belt. This allows the hips to be protected.
Watch the demonstration of our prototype below:
Watch the colored tape attached to the black belt before, during and after the fall. You can see that before the fall it is mostly hidden because the belt is folded up. After the fall, air fills the volume of the belt and it expands. This reveals the colored tape.
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