Challenge: How can we design a viable system, that allows people to restore or enhance their ability to move?
INDE: How to prevent hip fractures among elderly women? INDE is the concept of outcome from the second Challenge-Based Innovation (CBI) course organised in collaboration with CERN and multiple universities worldwide. The multi-disciplinary student team from Aalto University schools of Art & Design, Business and Engineering, ESADE Business School, IED and UPC Catalunya.
The team was given the assignment to enhance mobility. By looking to various forms of immobility, the team soon found out that a major issue in our society is the growing amount of problems related to old age. With this information, the team started looking into the significance of issues related to the falls and hip fractures caused by these falls among elderly people. The team also found out that 80% of hip fractures happen to the elderly women due to higher risk of osteoporosis and therefore the team found it reasonable to put emphasis on the women’s protective clothing.
The final working prototype presented at the CERN CBI gala by the team was a skirt attached with a reusable auto-inflator device and machine-learning algorithm to detect the fall patterns. With use of gyroscopes, accelerometers and charged carbon dioxide, auto inflation takes place before the person wearing the device hits the ground.