Automatic Waist Airbag Drowning Prevention System Based on Underwater Time-lapse and Motion Information Measured by Smartphone's Pressure Sensor and Accelerometer

ABSTRACT:

Drowning is the third cause of unintentionally injury death in the world. In United States it is considered the second cause of death among children under 12.Worldwide, children under 5 have the highest drowning mortality rate. Drowning accidents occurs even in swimming pool staffed with professional lifeguards. It is very hard for normal people to identify people drowning. Parents are required to watch permanently their children while they are swimming in the pool. However, this is practically difficult to ensure, as humans lose easily their attention. Drowning is considered silent and rapid death. In less than one minute a person can drown silently without being able to call for help. There are few commercialized wearable drowning prevention system. We propose an automatic airbag system helping evacuating swimmer who is motionless or spent abnormally long time underwater. The system is composed of a customized waist airbag and Smartphone equipped with pressure sensor and accelerometer. The Smartphone application will try to define accurately the position of the swimmer's head the whether underwater or not by comparing the real-time measured pressure to an estimated value of over the water surface pressure. If the time-lapse spent by the swimmer exceeds a predefined maximum threshold or the measured accelerometer information shows that he has been motionless for long time period underwater, an on device alarm is triggered and a signal is sent to the servomotor connected to the deflation system of the airbag to trigger it and evacuate the swimmer.