Work

Safe Fall: Use of Predictive Modeling and Machine Vision Techniques for Fall Analysis and Fall Quality

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Falls are a leading cause of paediatric injuries, yet school-based prevention relies heavily on subjective observation rather than objective biomechanical assessment. This paper introduces the Safe Fall framework, integrating a judo-inspired educational programme with an occlusion-robust computer vision pipeline to quantify safe falling strategies. We analysed video recordings of 285 schoolchildren using a multi-stage architecture combining YOLOv8 for detection, SAM 2 for segmentation, and MMPose for skeletal tracking. The intervention yielded significant improvements in 60% of kinematic metrics (p<0.05), most notably a +61.4% increase in descent rate and expanded rolling ranges, indicating a shift from hazardous “freezing” behaviours to controlled energy dissipation. Unsupervised clustering confirmed a migration of students towards safe motor profiles, while a Random Forest classifier achieved an accuracy of 98.3% and an AUC of 0.998 in distinguishing fall quality. These findings demonstrate that integrating pedagogical training with automated vision modelling provides a scalable and evidence-based approach for reducing injury risk in real-world school environments.

Source: Sensors

DOI: 10.3390/s26082491