Smart Pressure E-Mat for Human Sleeping Posture and Dynamic Activity Recognition

Abstract

With the emphasis on healthcare, early childhood education, and fitness, noninvasive measurement and recognition methods have received more attention. Pressure sensing has been extensively studied because of its advantages of simple structure, easy access, visualization application, and harmlessness. This article introduces a Smart Pressure e-Mat (SPeM) system based on piezoresistive material, Velostat, for human monitoring applications, including recognition of sleeping postures, sports, and yoga. After a subsystem scans the e-mat readings and processes the signal, it generates a pressure image stream. Deep neural networks are used to fit and train the pressure image stream and recognize the corresponding human behavior. Four sleeping postures and 13 dynamic activities inspired by Nintendo Switch Ring Fit Adventure are used as a preliminary validation of the proposed SPeM system. The SPeM system achieves high accuracies in both applications, demonstrating the high accuracy and generalizability of the models. Compared with other pressure sensor-based systems, SPeM possesses more flexible applications and commercial application prospects, with reliable, robust, and repeatable properties.