SmartCO 2 Life Jacket with AI-Based Drowning Detection

Drowning is one of the most common causes of unintentional death globally, and delay in rescue and inability to put on life jackets are the major causes. The current paper gives the design, implementation, and validation of a life jacket known as SmartCO2 Life Jacket, an autonomous, wearable device, which uses proactive drowning prevention based on the embedded Artificial Intelligence (AI). The system can be considered as a solution because it overcomes some of the severe drawbacks of traditional life jackets, namely incorporating real-time sensor fusion with a self-inspired inflation system. An inertial measurement unit (IMU), which is an MPU6050, is included within a multi-sensor module alongside a water immersion sensor and a SW- 420 vibration sensor to constantly check on the user and their environmental and kinematic context. The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense is a microcontroller based on a small application of TinyML, which is trained to moderate activity and differentiate between benign motion (e.g. walking, swimming) and dangerous phenomena that may indicate a fall into water. The main problem is a non-randomized decision support: it is only when a fall and immersion in water are detected simultaneously that the system is tasked with opening a sealed cartridge containing CO2, thereby accelerating the process of inflating the life jacket in a few seconds through the punching of a newly created hole by a solenoid mechanism. It was designed and tested in controlled simulation of a functional prototype. In this the results of the experiment prove that the accuracy of the fall detection is 93-95% and the reliability in sensing the water immersion is equal to 100, moreover the entire system response time is 3–5 seconds of the time falling starts and full inflation is attained. This study definitively confirms the practicality of an intelligent, dependable, and economical safety platform to a wide range of at-risk groups, such as recreational swimmers, maritime workers, and people living in flood-prone areas, thus creating a new standard on the personal protective gear based on Artificial Intelligence.