The inspiration for Home Body came from our sponsors Richard Davids and Michael Bartosewcz, founder of HOME Shelter. Falls are the leading cause of fatal injuries in older Americans. HOME Shelter envisioned Home Body as a ubiquitous solution to detecting fallen bodies through an IR sensor to mitigate this issue, in a conventional, commercialized application equivalent to that of a smoke detector. We proposed this system to meet the desired need to combat epidemiological issues associated with falling. The senior design group’s task was to implement this system: A commercialized infrared, thermal camera, connected over I2c to a microcontroller board running a digital signal processing algorithm to detect falls. Providing a low-cost, portable, ambient environment sensor system that detects the presence of a fallen stationary human body using InfraRed (IR) technology and/or sound at floor level, and is capable of transmitting an alert to a family or medical personnel. The project incorporates the design of the sensor and integration in a contemporary household based on epidemiological data associated with household falls. This project is joint with MEM Senior Design Group 13. Thus, the product additionally incorporates risk, cost, marketing, and manufacturing plans, to make the sensor system a commercial product.

Our team collaborated with Management & Engineering for Manufacturing 13 on this project.