The SmartCane System: An Assistive Device for Geriatrics

Abstract

Falls are currently a leading cause of death from injury in the elderly. The usage of the conventional assistive cane devices is critical in reducing the risk of falls and is relied upon by over 4 million patients in the U.S.. While canes provide physical support as well as supplementary sensing feedback to patients, at the same time, these conventional aids also exhibit serious adverse effects that contribute to falls. The falls due to the improper usage of the canes are particularly acute in the elderly and disabled where reduced cognitive capacity accompanied by the burden of managing cane motion leads to increased risk. This paper describes the development of the SmartCane assistive system that encompasses broad engineering challenges that will impact general development of individualized, robust assistive and prosthetic devices. The SmartCane system combines advances in signal processing, embedded computing, and wireless networking technology to provide capabilities for remote monitoring, local signal processing, and real-time feedback on the cane usage. This system aims to reduce risks of injuries and falls by enabling training and guidance of patients in proper usage of assistive devices.

Wireless Sensor Networks for Healthcare

“…Traditional assistive devices such as canes, crutches, walkers, and wheel chairs can fuse information from built-in and external sensors to provide the users with continual personalized feedback and guidance towards the correct usage of the devices. Such devices can also adapt the physical characteristics of the device with respect to the context and a prescribed training or rehabilitation regimen [78]. Furthermore, wireless networked sensing enables new types of assistive devices such as way finding [17] and walking navigation [8] for the visually impaired.…”

“…These devices target fitness enthusiasts, health conscious individuals, and observe cardiac or neural events that may not manifest during a short visit to the doctor. / More recently, embedded medical sensors built into assistive and prosthetic devices for geriatrics [78] and orthotics [18] have emerged. / Finally, we are seeing the emergence of implantable medical sensors for continuously measuring internal health status and physiological signals.…”

Fault-Tolerant and Low-Power Sampling Schedules for Localized BASNs

“…BASNs have been applied to host of medical problems from geriatric assistance [10] to emotional health monitoring [24]. Given that it is possible to build systems that can interpret medical diagnostics from electrical signals, attention has also been paid to the energy-efficiency and power consumption of BASNs and their effects on system longevity [3].…”

“…In order to accomplish this, we first note that there must be one set each, of the following structures, per metric: senPred, sensSamp, predMap, redSet, sampContr, and coverage. We construct a vector of metric weights that will be used to switch between the metrics in the main while loop of the PCSS algorithm (lines [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. A weight, , for maximum amplitude and, , for guardedness will assign up to of the assigned epochs to samples for the maximum amplitude metric and up to of the assigned epochs to samples for guardedness.…”

Sensor Networks and its Application in Electronic Medicine: Detailed Analysis of its Prospects, Challenges, and Socio-Economic Impact

“…For example, the soft robotic gloves help people suffering from loss of hand motor control to regain some of their independence by making use of information about the patient's physiological and physical state (gleaned through streams of attached sensors) to provide adaptive medical assistance to the patient [15]. Increasingly, typical assistive devices such as walkers, wheel chairs, and crutches are now built to fuse in sensors and other artificially intelligent components which can use information from built-in and external sensors to provide the users with continual personalized feedback and guidance towards the correct usage of the devices [16].…”