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Stunt Woman Tests Apple Watch With Violent Fake Falls (hothardware.com)
It seems like everyone's curious about how the Apple Watch 4 detects falls. The Washington Post reports:
In the interest of science, I've tried jumping off ledges and throwing myself onto furniture. The thing never went off. (The feature is on by default only for people older than 65, but I turned mine on.) It's possible, even likely, that the Watch could tell I was faking.
What's important is actual falls, not stunts. Apple says it studied the falls of 2,500 people of varying ages. Yet the company hasn't said how often it catches real falls or sets off false alarms. This isn't like claiming the "best camera ever" on a smartphone -- if Apple wants us to think of its products as life aids, it ought to show us the data. Even better: peer-reviewed studies. Apple's disclaimer says: "Apple Watch cannot detect all falls. The more physically active you are, the more likely you are to trigger Fall Detection due to high impact activity that can appear to be a fall."
But there's now also a new video by the Wall Street Journal that tests the watch's fall-detecting capabilities with a professional stuntwoman. Hot Hardware reports: The Wall Street Journal found that the Apple Watch did a very good job of detecting a serious fall while ignoring insignificant or outright fake falls. The stunt double performed a series of falls that are similar to falls in the slides that Apple showed in its keynote explaining the feature. In the testing, the watch was able to identify those falls and offer to call emergency services.
The most interesting part is that even though the stunt woman pulled some serious fake falls, complete with Hollywood-style tumbling down a hill, the Apple Watch was able to figure out if the fall was fake and didn't offer to call emergency services.
The Journal's reporter credits the watch's gyroscope and accelerometer, which can monitor numerous factors including both speed and wrist trajectory. Their conclusion?
"Turns out the Apple Watch really does know when you're just playing around."
What's important is actual falls, not stunts. Apple says it studied the falls of 2,500 people of varying ages. Yet the company hasn't said how often it catches real falls or sets off false alarms. This isn't like claiming the "best camera ever" on a smartphone -- if Apple wants us to think of its products as life aids, it ought to show us the data. Even better: peer-reviewed studies. Apple's disclaimer says: "Apple Watch cannot detect all falls. The more physically active you are, the more likely you are to trigger Fall Detection due to high impact activity that can appear to be a fall."
But there's now also a new video by the Wall Street Journal that tests the watch's fall-detecting capabilities with a professional stuntwoman. Hot Hardware reports: The Wall Street Journal found that the Apple Watch did a very good job of detecting a serious fall while ignoring insignificant or outright fake falls. The stunt double performed a series of falls that are similar to falls in the slides that Apple showed in its keynote explaining the feature. In the testing, the watch was able to identify those falls and offer to call emergency services.
The most interesting part is that even though the stunt woman pulled some serious fake falls, complete with Hollywood-style tumbling down a hill, the Apple Watch was able to figure out if the fall was fake and didn't offer to call emergency services.
The Journal's reporter credits the watch's gyroscope and accelerometer, which can monitor numerous factors including both speed and wrist trajectory. Their conclusion?
"Turns out the Apple Watch really does know when you're just playing around."
It probably can tell real falls from fake ones by measuring rapid decelleration. In a real fall you would usually come to a stopped state almost instantaneously while in a fake fall you would absorb some of the impact by cushioning the impact (slowing the decelleration) with your arms and legs. If this is right then this watch wouldn't detect someone falling off a roof and getting impaled on fence.
Niagra Falls?
Slowly I turned...
Step By Step...
Inch By Inch...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
It's possible, even likely, that the Watch could tell I was faking.
If your Apple Watch can detect when you fake fall versus when you real fall, then it is sentient. In the future, you will have to ask it nicely to do anything which may result in harm or damage to your Apple Watch. Please watch this documentary for additional details.
"The most interesting part is that even though the stunt woman pulled some serious fake falls, complete with Hollywood-style tumbling down a hill, the Apple Watch was able to figure out if the fall was fake and didn't offer to call emergency services."
Yeah right. How do we know the watched was that smart and just didn't trigger properly on what should have been perceived as a massive fall. The type of stunts stunt people do are not normal activities that should be ignored for the rest of us.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
It probably can tell real falls from fake ones by measuring rapid decelleration.
That is probably part of it (if you didn't land hard enough, why signal for help?) but there's at least one other aspect - in the keynote Apple showed how they also measured the wind-up if you will - the arm motions that preceded a fan, especially something like tripping or falling where the arms have pretty detectable and nearly involuntary actions that you can use as an indicator along with how hard you land. The involuntary and probably very rapid motions would be harder to fake unless you knew what that looked like by studying falls (which stunt-people do).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That video was just an advertisement, it praised all the features, including: "the battery life has been solid, lasting a day and a half" !
And it claims this is a good investment for older people who need fall detection, just because the $400 device did detect a falls they tried. Will the older people remember to charge it every night? How will it detect their falls when they go to the toilet during the night charging time? At the same time there are specialized fall detectors for the elderly, how about doing a comparison?
Many Apple slashvertisements lately...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I guess we just need to wait. Given enough time, Apple will evenryally get sued when some elderly falls seriously and this sorry gimmick doesn't do it's thing.
I can already see in the news "Elderly falls wrong, Apple watch ignores it".
How can I get a job tipping over old people?
Have gnu, will travel.
I wonder if her methodology also included simulating what happens after a fall resulting in injury (tried to RTFA but blocked due to ad blocker detection), such as lack of movement, labored movement, erratic heart beat, etc. It might be that the watch looks for two or more conditions before triggering an alert, for example a high G event followed by slow twisting movements or no movement at all.
If your heart is still beating it is not a serious fall.
...omphaloskepsis often...
The whole point of a stunt fall is to look like a real fall but not produce the kinds of impacts that'd result in injury. It makes sense that trying to fake a fall that way would result in the watch deciding it wasn't a real fall. There wouldn't have been, for instance, the kind of sharp, sudden impact you see in a real fall because the stuntperson would be spreading the impact out over time so they wouldn't break bones.
I read that the Applewatch should not be used in high impact water sports such as water skiing.
So if granny slips in the shower and bangs the apple watch on the tile, the apple watch will not save her.
What current devices can detect a fall in the shower?
I somehow think it is more likely that it's not very good at recognizing serious falls in the first place.
Unless the stunt woman actually went and caused real serious injury to herself on at least one fall and it *did* correctly identify that as a real fall, then I'm more inclined to think that this is feature that doesn't work as well as they might advertise it to.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
with a drunken Ivy League frat boy and see if it triggers when she's thrown down and held down.
I don't know why I'm seeing this story, since I have Ad-Block turned on.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Just a thought.
Crash-Test-Dummy: "Dammit, filthy humans are taking our jobs!"
Table-ized A.I.
You're falling wrong.
Look it's going to detect some real false and it's going to have a false positive rate and a missed-true rate. no matter what. so what ecaxly are we discussing here. Joanna Stern at the WSJ dod the exact same thematic test with a stunt person and came to the exact oppostie conclusion.
Bottom line is a senior citizen who lives alone is better off with this than without it. Anyone disagree?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It sounds like it could detect the falls actually portrayed by Apple when recreated. Is it actually just detecting those motions and everything else is a "fake" fall? 2500 isn't very many, and it is far more credible that it is easily fooled and missing actual falls than that it is miraculous as not being tricked by fake falls.
As in martial arts, stunt people learn how to go to the ground while minimizing the impact on their body.
So a fake fall is quite different from a natural fall, even if it looks for the audience the same (or similar).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
you're good at these things, wooing the other sheep with pretentious exercises to make them spend money.
Well, that proves it. Time to put it on over a million people's wrists without worrying about any false callouts.
Iâ(TM)ve had mine for a couple of weeks. Iâ(TM)ve had one false fall detection happen when I was using my fist to literally hammer together an IKEA style bookshelf. The high G impact was enough. Iâ(TM)ve had one real detection when I went down hard riding my mountain bike. In both cases it alerted and asked if I needed help. BTW: Iâ(TM)m seeing two solid days of battery life even when using GPS and heart rate monitoring for multiple hour rides.
for my mom who has started falling. Those things that elderly people wear around their necks only work at home. Both of my moms bad falls have happened when she was out and about. She doesnt always keep her cell phone on all the time. At the very least she can call for help if necessary, while ideally it will automatically call for help if needed. Hopefully the people at the apple store can teach her how to use it.
Sounds like they trained a neural network on a lot of falls.
Which means, they don't really know what they actually trained it to do either.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Over a year ago (don't recall exactly when, the book was published last December) I used a similar device in The Eridani Convergence when the protagonist hurls himself from a moving car (autonomous, and it had been hacked to kidnap him) in the middle of nowhere. He wakes up in a hospital room:
I like to think that someone at Apple read that and thought it was a good idea, but probably they were already working on it. Or they worked fast. ;)
-- Alastair
Fainting would have easily detectable arm motion also because your arms would move in a very rag-doll like manner without control until you hit the ground. Just like tripping and slipping have distinguishable precursors of movement to detect and use as a judge of if it should prompt to alarm or not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Okay, this is a bunch of bullshit.
My wife has an Apple Watch. Its detection algorithms are extremely inconsistent: it frequently doesn't detect that she's exercising or her heart rate. It frequently doesn't detect that she has raised her wrist. Etc.
The actual title of this article should be: "Apple Watch Cannot Reliably Detect Falls." Because that's the far simpler explanation: not that it has some fancy algorithmically-generated profiles for "real falls" vs. "fake falls," but that it has one profile for "falls" that is unreliable.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Our insurance company sent my wife one of those devices at no cost following her heart mitral valve replacement and hip replacement. It turned out to be touchy and temperamental. She'd just set it down on the coffee table and it would trigger dial the company. The service person had to go through a script before they'd hang up. While hanging around her neck it would swing back and forth and eventually bang against her sternum, setting it off. She averaged 3 to 5 false triggers per day. On the only day she could have used it we were walking to the stadium to watch our grandson play baseball. We went single file through a gap in the curb and I heard a thud behind me. She had fallen face first flat onto the concrete. The device didn't trigger. I drove her to the doctor and she got a 1.5" cut sewed up. Her face was black and blue for months because she was on blood thinner. We boxed the device up and sent it back. Fortunately, it didn't cost us anything.
I suspect that the Series 4 Apple Watch would behave the same way.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
When I saw this feature my 1st thought was "I wonder how the emergency services call centres will deal with a higher volume of false calls?"
This isn't the first (v)blogger to try out this new Apple watch feature and, from what I've seen so far, it looks like it's takes more than a theatrical fall to trigger it.
It takes no great technical genius to set up something that starts a 1 minute timer after the accelerometer detects an impact and call 911/999/111/etc
What Apple's not telling is how they've mitigated, if at all, false positives for this fall and call feature.
I did wonder if they were relying on the user being over 65 but since that can be by-passed then they really need some form of smart decision making.
Two things that could hurt Apple's much guarded reputation here:
1) Some 65+ user falls and dies and their S4 Apple Watch does nothing. This is priority. Better lots of false positives than one death.
2) Too many under 65's switch it on and it the increase in false emergency calls brings out the grand standing politicians summoning the angry crowd with torches & pitchforks. Yes, I know the watch asks you if you are ok before calling but you might be distracted long enough to not notice or be able to respond.
Time will tell I suppose.
I have to tell my watch how fucking old I am now? What else does it need to know?