An activity monitoring system for detecting movement by a person lying on a bed

To protect against falls by patients leaving bed, we developed a system for beds that detects a variety of movements. Our system consists of sensor bars that use switches common to PC keyboards, a processor, and a communication device. This paper reports an examination of the effectiveness of the system in which we found that the functions worked well. The system is ready for commercialization. We plan to improve the system to fit the beds of other companies and to fit Japanese "Futon".