Inspired by the fact that the elderly are at high risk of fall-related injuries whilst moving around, a group of talented students from the Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Da Nang University of Technology and Education have jointly successfully created a smart walking stick for seniors to help them move more convenient and safer manner.

The talented group with the smart walking stick for seniors

This simple yet highly useful walking stick has a system connecting with a smartphone. Thanks to this, the elderly can send emergency signals to their relatives who use smartphones in order to appeal for help at any time.

Le Nhat Thien Sao, the group leader, said that it took 2 months to develop ideas and seek suitable materials to create the prototype stick. Finally, after more than 5 months of hard work, the prototype stick was created successfully.

The battery-operated walking stick only costs around 700,000 VND which is four times cheaper than the similar foreign product.

If the product is mass produced, it will become the first domestically-made smart travel aid for the elderly.

The fully-charged battery can sits 12 hours. The most important part of this stick is its handle which contains the transceiver to send the warning signal to the smartphone to take timely measures to avoid the potential incidents facing seniors.

The device is used based on the angle of inclination. When the user fall over, the stick will activate the loudspeaker system, and then send notifications to the smartphone user.

In addition, the device’s handle features 3 buttons, painted red, green and white separately, with different functions.

Accordingly, the red button is pressed to send emergency notifications to the smartphone user.
In some cases, if the stick user is able to get up from a fall, or accidentally drops the stick, he/she can press the blue button to send an OK messages to his/her relatives.

The remaining white button is used to deactivate the loudspeaker system. 

Currently, the students are focusing on enhancing the functions of the stick by adding additional features such as identifying the exact location where a fall occurs, and sending signals to many receivers, instead of using the only one phone number currently. The more intelligent walking sticks are made, the more seniors will be able to enjoy the benefits and feel comfortable in their daily lives.

The creators of this stick have already won the first prize in their university-launched scientific research contest for students, and their product will compete at a municipal-level scientific research competition initiated by the Department of Science and Technology, and afterwards, a similar event at the national level.