EVALUATING A RELIABLE MICROCONTROLLER SYSTEM FOR SITTING BALANCE TREATMENT

Abstract

Rationale: As time spent seated increases, balanced sitting posture is more important now than ever before. Unbalanced sitting posture deteriorates spinal curvature, which can predispose the pathological discs in the back, leading to irreversible damage. An IoT platform was connected to a chair with pressure sensors attached for this microcontroller device that continuously collected the user's sitting data.
 Procedures: An Arduino Yun microcontroller board was used to monitor sitting posture with the balance feedback system (BFS), which consisted of reliable pressure sensor kits and an IoT platform. Four pressure sensors were coordinated to acquire sitting pressure using the software algorithm, and data was sent to the Thingspeak server and plotted in real-time. The testing session was divided into three stages to verify the system's performance: pre-BFS stage, BFS-Treatment stage, and post-BFS stage. Each stage consisted of the volunteer sitting in the chair for an hour daily for five consecutive days. During the pre-BFS stage, the volunteer sat in the chair to measure their natural seated pressure distribution without using the application. During the BFS-Treatment stage, the volunteer sat in the chair using the application to review pressure data. For the post-BFS stage, the volunteer did not have access to the application in hopes that they could apply their learnings from the previous stage to sit with corrected posture.
 Conclusions: The study concluded that the BFS could monitor the user’s sitting posture and help improve posture to maintain a balanced state. This study can contribute to the prevention of various sitting diseases.