3rd Place · 2026 Future Health Challenge Fall Detection & AI Companionship

What if falling
never meant falling alone?

Pebble senses and stays present — pairing acoustic fall detection with a warm AI companion, so help arrives in seconds and independence doesn't mean isolation.

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Photograph of the Pebble device: a compact wheeled robot with a soft dome body and two glowing crescent-shaped eyes on its face.

Pebble, always present — never intrusive.

1 in 4 older adults falls each year — and fewer than half tell their doctor.
More people are aging in place every year than ever before — we need solutions built to match.
Seconds not minutes — how quickly a fall needs to be noticed to matter.
Why We Built This

My mother waited more than an hour.

She fell at home and broke her arm, unable to reach her phone. Talking to other older adults living alone afterward, the same fear kept surfacing — not the fall itself, but the thought of lying there with no one coming. That fear has a name, basophobia, and it's self-defeating: it makes people move less, which only raises their risk of falling again. Pebble exists so that fear doesn't have to be part of aging alone.

How Pebble Works

Sensing that respects the room it's in

No cameras, no wearable to remember, and nothing recorded. Every sound Pebble hears is processed on-device and never stored or sent anywhere — it just responds like someone who's paying attention.

Notices

A 4-microphone array picks up the short, sharp sound signature of a fall — even through a closed bathroom door or over a running shower.

Confirms

60GHz radar confirms someone's actually there, even in total darkness — cutting false alarms instead of crying wolf.

Responds

Pebble checks in by voice first. No answer, or a call for help — and family is alerted immediately.

A companion, not a monitor

Between emergencies, Pebble is easy company — a voice for check-ins, reminders, and conversation. It's built to feel like presence, not surveillance.

Peace of mind for family

When something's wrong, the people who care are notified right away — with enough context to know whether to call or come over.

Scientific Advisory Board

Grounded in rehabilitation science

Pebble is guided by a multidisciplinary panel of researchers and clinicians helping us advance the science of fall detection and physical therapy — not just the engineering of it.

Portrait of Dr. Machiko Tomita
Dr. Machiko Tomita
Occupational Therapy & Rehabilitation Science

Dr. Tomita is advising informally on how Pebble distinguishes real falls from everyday movement, and is helping guide the project's IRB submission and research design as it moves toward a formal study.

Portrait of Dr. Nikhil Satchidanand
Dr. Nikhil Satchidanand
Research Advisor

Dr. Satchidanand is advising informally on clinical study design and IRB submission, helping shape how Pebble's fall-detection research will be validated.

They're joined by a growing panel of researchers and scientists across rehabilitation medicine, biomedical engineering, and physical therapy — helping keep Pebble honest to the science, not just the story.

Be among the first to bring Pebble home.

Early Access members help shape the product and get first access when we launch.

Register for Early Access