A Wearable Wireless System For Unobtrusive Measurement Of Human Motion

Assessing abnormal movement resulting from poor health is essential for monitoring patients’ health status and quality of life. In this paper, we describe a capstone senior design project that uses wearable wireless sensors to measure and collect signals with information about the motion of a person in need of medical care. A triaxial body-fixed accelerometer is used to record human motion. Sampled data are transmitted using an IEEE 802.15.4 wireless transceiver to a data logger and passed to a PC. The analysis of the recorded data facilitates possible characterization of human motion. The implemented system allows for inexpensive and unobtrusive monitoring during normal daily activities at home or in a nursing home environment. 1. Introduction Today’s health care systems are burdened by the increasing number of the elderly and persons with disabilities needing medical support. New technologies are being used to provide improved support for people bounded in their homes and assisted living environments. Thanks to the development of communication and sensor technologies, a smart home health care scenario is possible where patients can stay at home and have their vital physiological signs monitored. When an abnormal condition occurs, the health monitoring system can detect it and notify the caregivers. Thus, the patients can receive assessment and treatment in a timely manner. In this paper, we describe a capstone senior design project that uses wearable wireless sensors to measure and collect signals with information about the motion of a person in need of medical care. A triaxial waist-mounted accelerometer is used to measure human motion. Sampled data are wirelessly transmitted and recorded for a careful processing. Through the analysis of the recorded data, it is therefore possible to characterize and classify human motion events such as sitting, standing, rotation, walking, and jumping. The implemented system allows for inexpensive and unobtrusive monitoring during normal daily activities at home or in a nursing home environment. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The system architecture and selection of the key components are described in Section 2. The detailed design and implementation of the system is explained in Section 3. Section 4 presents the experimental results and Section 5 concludes this paper.