Machine learning algorithms for fall detection using kinematic and heart rate parameters-a comprehensive analysis

Abstract

The application of machine learning techniques to detect and classify falls is a prominent area of research in the domain of intelligent assisted living systems. Machine learning (ML) based solutions for fall detection systems built on wearable devices use various sources of information such inertial motion units (IMU), vital signs, acoustic or channel state information parameters. Most existing research rely on only one of these sources; however, a need to do more experimenation to observe the efficiency of the ML classifiers while coupling features from diverse sources, was felt. In addition, fall detection systems based on wearable devices, require intelligent feature engineering and selection for dimensionality reduction, so as to reduce the computational complexity of the devices. In this paper we do a comprehensive performance analysis of ML classifiers for fall detection, on a dataset we collected. The analysis includes the impact of the following aspects on the performance of ML classifiers for fall detection: (i) using a combination of features from 2 sensors-an IMU sensor and a heart rate sensor, (ii) feature engineering and feature selection based on statistical methods, and (iii) using ensemble techniques for fall detection. We find that the inclusion of heart rate along with IMU sensor parameters improves the accuracy of fall detection. The conclusions from our experimentations on feature selection and ensemble analysis can serve as inputs for researchers designing wearable device-based fall detection systems.