Design and test of a hybrid foot force sensing and GPS system for richer user mobility activity recognition

Sensors (Basel). 2013 Nov 1;13(11):14918-53. doi: 10.3390/s131114918.

Abstract

Wearable and accompanied sensors and devices are increasingly being used for user activity recognition. However, typical GPS-based and accelerometer-based (ACC) methods face three main challenges: a low recognition accuracy; a coarse recognition capability, i.e., they cannot recognise both human posture (during travelling) and transportation mode simultaneously, and a relatively high computational complexity. Here, a new GPS and Foot-Force (GPS + FF) sensor method is proposed to overcome these challenges that leverages a set of wearable FF sensors in combination with GPS, e.g., in a mobile phone. User mobility activities that can be recognised include both daily user postures and common transportation modes: sitting, standing, walking, cycling, bus passenger, car passenger (including private cars and taxis) and car driver. The novelty of this work is that our approach provides a more comprehensive recognition capability in terms of reliably recognising both human posture and transportation mode simultaneously during travel. In addition, by comparing the new GPS + FF method with both an ACC method (62% accuracy) and a GPS + ACC based method (70% accuracy) as baseline methods, it obtains a higher accuracy (95%) with less computational complexity, when tested on a dataset obtained from ten individuals.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Accelerometry / instrumentation*
  • Adult
  • Equipment Design
  • Female
  • Foot / physiology*
  • Geographic Information Systems / instrumentation*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Monitoring, Ambulatory / instrumentation*
  • Monitoring, Ambulatory / methods
  • Walking / classification
  • Walking / physiology*