A DEPLOYMENT OF FSR SENSORS AND ITS SENSING ALGORITHM FOR IMPLEMENTING A SMART BED TO PREVENT PRESSURE ULCERS

摘要

The number of domestic senior care centers has increased exponentially. The biggest problem of the senior care centers is that they have absolutely insufficient manpower and need efficient management of patients with limited manpower. Patients with pressure ulcers often do not move themselves, so it is necessary to change their postures when lying down in the same position for a certain period of time. In particular, admission to a senior care center is known to be an important risk factor for the development of pressure ulcers. In the case of dementia patients, most of them are able to move themselves, so it is necessary to prevent falls or to tell nurses or caregivers whether they are lying in bed or not. We are interested in an implementation of a smart bed to aid nurses or caregivers for nursing elderly patients. The smart bed can detect the pressures occurred on a whole body of a patient at regular interval to prevent pressure ulcers and/or falling accident from the bed. The body structure of a person can be divided into three parts according to their characteristics: head, body, and leg. Legs, like arms, have weak loads and are frequently moving parts. On the other hand, the body is the area where the load is the largest and the area where the pressure ulcer occurs. Heads and legs can be measured only by the presence or absence of pressure, rather than by the exact location of the pressure. To do this, two types of pressure sensors are used to sense pressures on specific body parts depending on sensing purposes.