Fall Safe Effectiveness Diagram


We all drew diagrams of how the Fall Safe would work. The team chose William's drawing to represent our idea. Thousands of seniors fall and break bones each year. The hardest to recover from and live independently is the hip fracture. Many seniors who break a hip never regain their mobility. Our Fall Safe is a portable air bag belt worn around the hips that will deploy in a fall to cushion the pelvis and prevent fractures.

Benefits of Wearing Fall Safe
  1. Protect hips from fracture
  2. Improve quality of life by helping seniors be more mobile
  3. Security and confidence in wearer that they are safe from fracture
  4. Save on medical costs and extended care
Disadvantages  of Fall Safe
  1. User must actively wear product
  2. Does not protect head or arms
  3. must be repacked after deployment

The Fall Test


Sterling takes a dive

While discussing the potential need for our product, we figured it would be a good idea to test the physics of falling. Plus it sounded fun to push each other over. Luckily we had a nice soft bag to fall on. We all took turns being the fall victim.


Will took a backward tumble

Britton got bounced on his hip




Brainstorming Product Names

Every product needs to have a catchy and memorable name that also describes what it is or does.  Our personal air bag deserves a good name, so at one of our meetings we threw out all the names we could think of. All names were considered and some of them made us laugh. Some names were too silly to merit strong consideration. Our top choice was Fall Safe. All our possibilities are listed below.

The Good

  1. Fall Safe
  2. Hip Saver
  3. Hip Shield
  4. Hip Keeper
  5. Crash Guard
The  Mediocre
  1. Fracture Friend
  2. Body Bumper
  3. Balloon Belt
  4. Slip Stopper
  5. Hip Guard
The Bad
  1. Bone Balloon
  2. Butt Bubble
  3. Fall Friend
  4. Hip Bumper
The Absolute Worst
  1. Body Bag (this one made everyone laugh but would be a terrible name for obvious reasons)

The Project Choice- Personal Anti Fracture Air Bag


So after some discussion and research on what things have and have not been done before. We decided to go with the Personal Anti Fracture Air Bag. The idea as shown in the sketch from our brainstorming session was to create an air bag belt that would deploy if a senior citizen suffered a fall. The belt would have gyro sensors that the detect angle of motion and speed and would only deploy if it decided the wearer was falling. Similar technology exists in cars and other applications but not for this type of protection for a person. We decided to move forward with this idea.

Brainstorming Our Project

"A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time."  --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
We spent time at the library brainstorming our project. We came up with some great ideas and then spent time scouring the internet to see if any of them have already been done. We focused on things that might be helpful to senior citizens. Some of the ideas we had included:

A Lip Reading Hearing Aid that would focus a camera on the speaker and then use the video to filter out all the background noise and isolate what the speaker was saying

A Pill Machine that would hold all prescriptions and keep track of dosage, when they were last taken, alert when pills were needed and dispense. It would also alert when prescriptions needed to be refilled among other functions.

Mega Finger Traction that adheres to fingertips to aid grip in Seniors.

An automated Jar Opener

The Exo-Skeleton: A lightweight but strong robotic frame that would restore the strength and balance and remove need for canes and walkers.

Memory Glasses: takes a picture of items you needs to remember like keys or glasses and then records the location if you forget.

Speech Enhancer to help the elderly who have trouble speaking such as after a stroke.

And Our Favorite:

The Invisible Air Bag Belt- This device would deploy an air bag to protect the hips of elderly people from fractures in the event of a fall. Worn around the waist, the airbags would deploy if the person fell.

After looking online, we determined that the air bag idea was the best as it had not been created and would offer a lot of benefit to the wearer including safety and confidence.



Having Fun Builds Team Spirit

Britton and Will sling snowballs
Check out that distance!
Fun on the slides

We love to mess around as much as we like robots. Whether it is throwing snowballs or eating junk food, fun makes everything better. 

The Team

Britton, Sterling, and Will

Our team Terabytes began for last year's First Lego League competition and this year we are back with a trimmed-down roster. We are a lean, mean team where everyone has a vital role to play. We are all friends from the same school and as such know how to work together, create great ideas and have fun.