WARE-Care: mmWave-based Fall Assessment and Prevention
WARE-Care (mmWave based fall Assessment and pRevEntion) is a non-intrusive system designed to monitor and assess older adults' falling risk in nursing facilities. The system addresses a critical gap: many falls in nursing facilities go unreported during night hours when older adults are alone, leading to reduced quality of life, increased fear of falling, and higher risk of injuries or death.
Key Features
- Privacy-Preserving: mmWave radar generates point clouds for skeleton tracking without capturing detailed facial information
- All-Conditions Monitoring: Operates in all lighting conditions, ideal for nighttime use
- Non-Intrusive: No body-worn sensors required during sleeping hours
- Comprehensive Assessment: Evaluates fall risk through multiple activities (Balance, TUG, Sit-to-Stand, Gait, Upper Extremity Function)
- Interpretable Fall Detection: mmFall-Ex model provides gradient heatmaps showing fall type and impacted body parts
Technology
The system combines IWR6843ISK-ODS mmWave radar from Texas Instruments with advanced machine learning techniques including:
- mmPose-FK for accurate skeleton pose estimation from radar point clouds
- Spatial-Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks (STGCN) for fall detection
- Inverse Kinematics for joint angle calculation and feature extraction
- Statistical analysis for personalized fall risk assessment
Clinical Validation
Data collection conducted at multiple sites including University of Arizona labs and retirement communities (Hacienda and La Posada). The system has been validated with both healthy adults and older adults (65+), compared against wearable LEGSys Bio-Sensics sensors and Microsoft Azure Kinect ground truth.