In our early work examining loss of balance (LOB) events in at-home activities, we found that LOBs occur nearly daily. These events occur not only in walking activities (trips, slips) but also in more stationary activities like reaching, bending, and changing position. We have now demonstrated the feasibility of gathering continuous IMU data during real-world activities with wrist voice recorders to designate LOBs and recovery attempts (2). We propose to advance this engineering work by identifying, in community-dwelling older adults at fall risk (n=10), key IMU-derived foot and trunk trajectories underlying LOBs and recovery during two-week monitoring of:
Primary Aim 1: Real-world LOBs, indicated by a wrist voice recorder, to include the context under which these LOBs occurred; and Primary Aim 2: Laboratory-based LOBs, occurring during a set of standard balance and mobility tasks that can trigger LOBs.
Primary Hypothesis: A finite set of foot and trunk movements characterize LOB recovery strategies.
Exploratory Hypothesis: Participants with laboratory-based performance reductions and LOBs are more likely to have more real-world LOBs, particularly during non-walking tasks.