Custom IMU-based wearable system for robust 2.4 GHz wireless human body parts orientation tracking and 3D movement visualization on an avatar

Recent studies confirm the applicability of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)-based systems for human motion analysis. Notwithstanding, high-end IMU-based commercial solutions are yet too expensive and complex to democratize their use among a wide range of potential users. Less featured entry-level co...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: González Alonso, Javier, Oviedo Pastor, David, Aguado Hernández, Héctor José, Díaz Pernas, Francisco Javier, González Ortega, David, Martínez Zarzuela, Mario
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión borrador
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Valladolid
Repositorio:UVaDOC. Repositorio Documental de la Universidad de Valladolid
OAI Identifier:oai:uvadoc.uva.es:10324/64341
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.3390/s21196642
https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/64341
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:body tracking
inertial sensor
wearable sensor
custom
do-it-yourself
motion capture
3325 Tecnología de las Telecomunicaciones
Descripción
Sumario:Recent studies confirm the applicability of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)-based systems for human motion analysis. Notwithstanding, high-end IMU-based commercial solutions are yet too expensive and complex to democratize their use among a wide range of potential users. Less featured entry-level commercial solutions are being introduced in the market, trying to fill this gap, but still present some limitations that need to be overcome. At the same time, there is a growing number of scientific papers using not commercial, but custom do-it-yourself IMU-based systems in medical and sports applications. Even though these solutions can help to popularize the use of this technology, they have more limited features and the description on how to design and build them from scratch is yet too scarce in the literature. The aim of this work is two-fold: (1) Proving the feasibility of building an affordable custom solution aimed at simultaneous multiple body parts orientation tracking; while providing a detailed bottom-up description of the required hardware, tools, and mathematical operations to estimate and represent 3D movement in real-time. (2) Showing how the introduction of a custom 2.4 GHz communication protocol including a channel hopping strategy can address some of the current communication limitations of entry-level commercial solutions. The proposed system can be used for wireless real-time human body parts orientation tracking with up to 10 custom sensors, at least at 50 Hz. In addition, it provides a more reliable motion data acquisition in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi crowded environments, where the use of entry-level commercial solutions might be unfeasible. This system can be used as a groundwork for developing affordable human motion analysis solutions that do not require an accurate kinematic analysis.