A body sensor network for tracking and monitoring of functional arm motion

In this paper, we present a novel sensing technique, Optical Linear Encoder (OLE), in which the motion of an optical encoder on a reflective strip is converted to limb joints' goniometric data. A body sensing module is designed to integrate the OLE and an accelerometer. A sensor network of three sensing modules is established via Controller Areas Network (CAN) bus to capture full motion of human arm with a 7-DOF kinematic model. In addition, a statistical study was conducted to confirm the repeatability and reliability of our sensor network. Results demonstrate that the sensor system has strong potential to be used as a low-cost tool for motion capture, and objective arm function evaluation for both short-term and long-term monitoring.