Prototype of Infant Drowning Prevention System at Home with Wireless Accelerometer

Death due to drowning accounts for about 30% of unintentional injuries of 1 to 4 year-old infants in Japan. A system for preventing infant drowning is strongly required. This paper describes a newly developed system for preventing infants 1G drowning injury at home. The prototype of infant drowning prevention system developed by the authors is presented. The developed system can measure the wave motion of water in the bathtub using a triaxial accelerometer, detect the abnormal wave motion, and give a warning to guardians with a radio communication. In this paper, the details of the system and the experimental results on abnormal wave motion detection are shown.