Polymer Optical Fiber-Based Sensor System for Smart Walker Instrumentation and Health Assessment

This paper presents a polymer optical fiber (POF)-based sensor system for smart walker (SW) instrumentation. The system comprises an oximetry sensor working in reflectance mode, which is embedded in a 3D printed handle for the SW. In addition, there is also a POF-based smart textile that can be integrated in the users’ clothes and is placed on their chest. In this case, the smart textile can detect the displacement caused by the respiration, vibration due to heartbeat and bending induced in the gait. Results show that the proposed sensor system can detect the oxygen saturation, breathing rate, gait cadence, and heart rate with errors of about 1%. In addition, it is proposed an architecture for the SW in which the POF-based sensor system can be applied not only for remote healthcare applications, but also as sensor feedback in cloud robotics for some control paradigms for human–robot interaction. Furthermore, the proposed instrumentation presents the possibility of novel SW control, where the health conditions of the user are considered in the human–robot interaction.

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