Design of a Smart IoT-Enabled Walker for Deployable Activity and Gait Monitoring

Satinder Gill1, Suraj Nssk2, Nitin Seth1, Erik Scheme

  • 1University of New Brunswick
  • 2National Institute of Technology, Rourkela

Details

10:00 - 17:00 | Tue 30 Oct | Foyer | B1P-C.4

Session: Wearable & Consumer Apps for Health & Wellness

Abstract

Increase in chronic disease incidents, coupled with the aging population has created a demand for a new line of preventative care and proactive health monitoring technologies. While senior populations have experienced difficulties with wearable technologies, the ability to retrofit and IoT enabled assistive device already in use by the individuals may provide a major stepping stone for increased adoption rates and monitoring abilities. Design of such systems often exhibit challenges with respect to sensor selection, placement, and consequent reliability and usability of the system in real world environments. As a component of an existing line of smart assistive devices, this work presents the proposed design of a multi-sensor walker with pilot data collected and tested in a real-world environment including outdoors. Preliminary analysis of results suggests the ability to determine levels of activity and environments, factors related to health and risk of falls.