Experimental validation of an ultrasound-based measurement system for human motion detection and analysis

Abstract

Human motion analysis is nowadays an appealing task of increasing interest in several application fields, like medicine and security. Many applications cover gait analysis, disaster recovery, telemetry, and surveillance. In this paper, the characterization of an ultrasound-based measurement system for human motion detection and analysis is dealt with. To this purpose, a number of measurement results in the form of spectrograms have been reported and discussed. They have been achieved by using a suitably-designed mechanical system emulating some specific human body movements. Hough transform has been applied to spectrograms, and the obtained results have been compared to the theoretical trajectories. Results of these comparisons show a good agreement between theoretical trajectories and measures, as well as between measures and Hough transform outcomes. This proves that the measurement system is actually efficient for human motion detection and analysis.