Fatigue estimation using foot pressure sensors

Falling accidents are likely to yield severe problems such as sprains and fractures, in some cases even death. Fatigue can be considered as one of the leading factors triggering falls. One solution is a wearable sensor that can detect fatigue, but fatigue level while walking has not been quantified to date. We focus on foot pressure while walking and examine the use of a wearable sensor to capture pressure patterns before and after stimulated fatigue. In this paper, we measure the foot pressure for fatigue levels as indicated by the Karubonen Formula. Our results show that foot pressure patterns from the heel area are excellent indicators of fatigue level.

[1]  Takuro Yonezawa,et al.  FASH: Detecting tiredness of walking people using pressure sensors , 2009, 2009 6th Annual International Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking & Services, MobiQuitous.

[2]  Kimio Oguchi,et al.  Sensor-based e-healthcare in a next generation convergence home network , 2011, ISABEL '11.

[3]  Nikolaos G. Bourbakis,et al.  A Survey on Wearable Sensor-Based Systems for Health Monitoring and Prognosis , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews).

[4]  P. Bonato,et al.  Wearable sensors/systems and their impact on biomedical engineering , 2003, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine.

[5]  Randy H. Katz,et al.  A view of cloud computing , 2010, CACM.

[6]  Joo Chuan Yeo,et al.  Effects of load carriage and fatigue on gait characteristics. , 2011, Journal of biomechanics.

[7]  Kimio Oguchi,et al.  Feasibility of assessing rehabilitation status by using foot pressure sensor while walking , 2011, 2011 Defense Science Research Conference and Expo (DSR).

[8]  Muhammad Muaaz,et al.  Influence of different walking speeds and surfaces on accelerometer-based biometric gait recognition , 2012, 2012 35th International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP).

[9]  Kimio Oguchi,et al.  Simulation environment based on smartphones for Cloud computing robots , 2012, 2012 35th International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP).

[10]  Kimio Oguchi,et al.  Relationship between fatigue and foot pressure while walking , 2012, Proceedings of 2012 IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics.