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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."
My mother broke her hip a few years ago by tripping over the edge of a chair and landing on tile, trying to get to her phone on the kitchen counter. She would've had to crawl, with a broken hip and various smaller injuries, some forty feet to the kitchen, remember exactly where her phone was, and somehow reach the top of the counter. Conscious, but in severe pain and unable to reach her phone. (And what actually came in handy was shouting at Alexa to call me.)
I turned the feature off after several false alarms in less than a day of normal use
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.