EVAL Cane: An IoT based Smart Cane for the Evaluation of Walking Gait and Environment
Ting Wang, Rupert Grobler, Éric Monacelli · 2020
The usage of Internet of Things (IoTs) in healthcare has increased sharply recently. The IoT technology is identified as a potential solution to alleviate the pressures on healthcare systems. This paper proposed a low-cost, non-intrusive and multi-function IoT based smart cane that can be used for the evaluation of human walking and evironment, i.e., EVAL Cane, for the elderly people or fragile people. Several sensors such as accelerometer/gyroscope, ultrasonic sensor, force sensitive resistor (FSR), and temperature sensor were instrumented on the cane to collect the data of user's walking gait and walking environment, which will be connected to the Internet through communication protocols like LoRa or WI-FI. Although these sensors were not installed on the human body directly, the user's gait feature can be described by certain of them such as accelerometer and FSR, that means the user's gait can be analyzed and evaluated during the walking with the cane. Besides, based on the data analysis of accelerometer, we can also detect unwanted events such as falls during the walking, which is helpful for the monitoring of user's health status. In addition, the cane has an ultrasonic sensor used to detect an obstacle in front of the cane and this sensor will work together with a buzzer in order to give a sound signal to the user when an obstruction is detected in front of him/her. The buzzer will also make a sound when a fall is detected. Moreover, the environmental temperature of the cane can be measured and be displayed on a LCD screen to the user along with the number of steps taken and the battery percentage level of the device. In a word, EVAL Cane is capable to monitor user's walking, detect the surrounding environment, give output back to the user, and collect data used for further analysis.