Vibration sensing-based human and infrastructure safety/health monitoring: A survey

Abstract

Current sensor technologies enable the passive and continuous monitoring of human behaviors as well as infrastructures to ensure personal safety and assess individual health state. One passive technology that has the potential of gathering personal data is the vibration sensor. In this paper, we carry out an extensive survey of the current vibration-based sensing technologies for human and infrastructure safety as well as health monitoring. These technologies utilize structural and bodies vibration as a source of data, and they can be incorporated in wearable or non-wearable devices. Furthermore, the vibration sensing technology utilizes low-cost and low-power sensors, which make it attractive for indoor and outdoor monitoring. We have classified the technologies into five categories: vibration-based sensing for assessing human health, recognizing personal behavior, inferring occupancy information, evaluating personal safety, and monitoring infrastructure health. In each category, we also classify the approaches that utilize single and multiple sensors. Moreover, we discuss the different types of signal processing and machine learning techniques that are applied to each approach.