scholarly journals Preferred Placement and Usability of a Smart Textile System vs. Inertial Measurement Units for Activity Monitoring

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 2501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Mokhlespour Esfahani ◽  
Maury Nussbaum

Wearable sensors and systems have become increasingly popular in recent years. Two prominent wearable technologies for human activity monitoring are smart textile systems (STSs) and inertial measurement units (IMUs). Despite ongoing advances in both, the usability aspects of these devices require further investigation, especially to facilitate future use. In this study, 18 participants evaluate the preferred placement and usability of two STSs, along with a comparison to a commercial IMU system. These evaluations are completed after participants engaged in a range of activities (e.g., sitting, standing, walking, and running), during which they wear two representatives of smart textile systems: (1) a custom smart undershirt (SUS) and commercial smart socks; and (2) a commercial whole-body IMU system. We first analyze responses regarding the usability of the STS, and subsequently compared these results to those for the IMU system. Participants identify a short-sleeved shirt as their preferred activity monitor. In additional, the SUS in combination with the smart socks is rated superior to the IMU system in several aspects of usability. As reported herein, STSs show promise for future applications in human activity monitoring in terms of usability.

Proceedings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (19) ◽  
pp. 1237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lourdes Martínez-Villaseñor ◽  
Hiram Ponce ◽  
Ricardo Abel Espinosa-Loera

Fall detection can improve the security and safety of older people and alert when fall occurs. Fall detection systems are mainly based on wearable sensors, ambient sensors, and vision. Each method has commonly known advantages and limitations. Multimodal and data fusion approaches present a combination of data sources in order to better describe falls. Publicly available multimodal datasets are needed to allow comparison between systems, algorithms and modal combinations. To address this issue, we present a publicly available dataset for fall detection considering Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), ambient infrared presence/absence sensors, and an electroencephalogram Helmet. It will allow human activity recognition researchers to do experiments considering different combination of sensors.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (23) ◽  
pp. 5283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianmarco Baldini ◽  
Filip Geib ◽  
Raimondo Giuliani

The concept of Continuous Authentication is to authenticate an entity on the basis of a digital output generated in a continuous way by the entity itself. This concept has recently been applied in the literature for the continuous authentication of persons on the basis of intrinsic features extracted from the analysis of the digital output generated by wearable sensors worn by the subjects during their daily routine. This paper investigates the application of this concept to the continuous authentication of automotive vehicles, which is a novel concept in the literature and which could be used where conventional solutions based on cryptographic means could not be used. In this case, the Continuous Authentication concept is implemented using the digital output from Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) mounted on the vehicle, while it is driving on a specific road path. Different analytical approaches based on the extraction of statistical features from the time domain representation or the use of frequency domain coefficients are compared and the results are presented for various conditions and road segments. The results show that it is possible to authenticate vehicles from the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) recordings with great accuracy for different road segments.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 1885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Poitras ◽  
Mathieu Bielmann ◽  
Alexandre Campeau-Lecours ◽  
Catherine Mercier ◽  
Laurent J. Bouyer ◽  
...  

Background: Workplace adaptation is the preferred method of intervention to diminish risk factors associated with the development of work-related shoulder disorders. However, the majority of the workplace assessments performed are subjective (e.g., questionnaires). Quantitative assessments are required to support workplace adaptations. The aims of this study are to assess the concurrent validity of inertial measurement units (IMUs; MVN, Xsens) in comparison to a motion capture system (Vicon) during lifting tasks, and establish the discriminative validity of a wireless electromyography (EMG) system for the evaluation of muscle activity. Methods: Sixteen participants performed 12 simple tasks (shoulder flexion, abduction, scaption) and 16 complex lifting tasks (lifting crates of different weights at different heights). A Delsys Trigno EMG system was used to record anterior and middle deltoids’ EMG activity, while the Xsens and Vicon simultaneously recorded shoulder kinematics. Results: For IMUs, correlation coefficients were high (simple task: >0.968; complex task: >0.84) and RMSEs were low (simple task: <6.72°; complex task: <11.5°). For EMG, a significant effect of weight, height and a weight x height interaction (anterior: p < 0.001; middle: p < 0.03) were observed for RMS EMG activity. Conclusions: These results suggest that wireless EMG and IMUs are valid units that can be used to measure physical demand in workplace assessments.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (15) ◽  
pp. 4083
Author(s):  
Friedrich Niemann ◽  
Christopher Reining ◽  
Fernando Moya Rueda ◽  
Nilah Ravi Nair ◽  
Janine Anika Steffens ◽  
...  

Optimizations in logistics require recognition and analysis of human activities. The potential of sensor-based human activity recognition (HAR) in logistics is not yet well explored. Despite a significant increase in HAR datasets in the past twenty years, no available dataset depicts activities in logistics. This contribution presents the first freely accessible logistics-dataset. In the ’Innovationlab Hybrid Services in Logistics’ at TU Dortmund University, two picking and one packing scenarios were recreated. Fourteen subjects were recorded individually when performing warehousing activities using Optical marker-based Motion Capture (OMoCap), inertial measurement units (IMUs), and an RGB camera. A total of 758 min of recordings were labeled by 12 annotators in 474 person-h. All the given data have been labeled and categorized into 8 activity classes and 19 binary coarse-semantic descriptions, also called attributes. The dataset is deployed for solving HAR using deep networks.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (17) ◽  
pp. 5773
Author(s):  
Carla Pérez-Chirinos Buxadé ◽  
Bruno Fernández-Valdés ◽  
Mónica Morral-Yepes ◽  
Sílvia Tuyà Viñas ◽  
Josep Maria Padullés Riu ◽  
...  

Inertial measurement units (IMUs) represent a technology that is booming in sports right now. The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity of a new application on the use of these wearable sensors, specifically to evaluate a magnet-based timing system (M-BTS) for timing short-duration sports actions using the magnetometer built into an IMU in different sporting contexts. Forty-eight athletes (22.7 ± 3.3 years, 72.2 ± 10.3 kg, 176.9 ± 8.5 cm) and eight skiers (17.4 ± 0.8 years, 176.4 ± 4.9 cm, 67.7 ± 2.0 kg) performed a 60-m linear sprint running test and a ski slalom, respectively. The M-BTS consisted of placing several magnets along the course in both contexts. The magnetometer built into the IMU detected the peak-shaped magnetic field when passing near the magnets at a certain speed. The time between peaks was calculated. The system was validated with photocells. The 95% error intervals for the total times were less than 0.077 s for the running test and 0.050 s for the ski slalom. With the M-BTS, future studies could select and cut the signals belonging to the other sensors that are integrated in the IMU, such as the accelerometer and the gyroscope.


Author(s):  
Ahmed Halim ◽  
A. Abdellatif ◽  
Mohammed I Awad ◽  
Mostafa RA Atia

This paper aims to enhance the accuracy of human gait prediction using machine learning algorithms. Three classifiers are used in this paper: XGBoost, Random Forest, and SVM. A predefined dataset is used for feature extraction and classification. Gait prediction is determined during several locomotion activities: sitting (S), level walking (LW), ramp ascend (RA), ramp descend (RD), stair ascend (SA), stair descend (SD), and standing (ST). The results are gained for steady-state (SS) and overall (full) gait cycle. Two sets of sensors are used. The first set uses inertial measurement units only. The second set uses inertial measurement units, electromyography, and electro-goniometers. The comparison is based on prediction accuracy and prediction time. In addition, a comparison between the prediction times of XGBoost with CPU and GPU is introduced due to the easiness of using XGBoost with GPU. The results of this paper can help to choose a classifier for gait prediction that can obtain acceptable accuracy with fewer types of sensors.


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