Abstract
Wearable sensors are beneficial for continuous health monitoring, movement analysis, rehabilitation, evaluation of human performance, and for fall detection. Wearable stretch sensors are increasingly being used for human movement monitoring. Additionally, falls are one of the leading causes of both fatal and nonfatal injuries in the workplace. The use of wearable technology in the workplace could be a successful solution for human movement monitoring and fall detection, especially for high fall-risk occupations. This paper provides an in-depth review of different wearable stretch sensors and summarizes the need for wearable technology in the field of ergonomics and the current wearable devices used for fall detection. Additionally, the paper proposes the use of soft-robotic-stretch (SRS) sensors for human movement monitoring and fall detection. This paper also recapitulates the findings of a series of five published manuscripts from ongoing research that are published as Parts I to V of “Closing the Wearable Gap” journal articles that discuss the design and development of a foot and ankle wearable device using SRS sensors that can be used for fall detection. The use of SRS sensors in fall detection, its current limitations, and challenges for adoption in human factors and ergonomics are also discussed.
Highlights
Wearables are often defined as “technologies used to measure various physiological and kinematic parameters by being sported or borne by the user” [1,2]
The findings indicated that all four SRS sensors provided a successful fit identified by a high adjusted R2 value (R2 = 0.854) and lower mean absolute error (MAE) (MAE = 1.54) and root mean square error (RMSE) values (RMSE = 1.96), suggesting that SRS sensors could be a feasible option to capture ankle joint kinematics both on flat, as well on tilted, surfaces [16]
This paper provides a review of the current WSS, a summary of the current research team’s efforts to design, develop, and test a foot and ankle wearable device with the use of a novel SRS sensor and, subsequently, propose this wearable device as a potential fall detection system in the field of human factors and ergonomics, while addressing the limitations, future scope, and challenges of such wearable devices in the workplace
Summary
Wearables are often defined as “technologies used to measure various physiological and kinematic parameters by being sported or borne by the user” [1,2]. The purpose of wearable technology or devices is to assess human performance—that is, biomechanical or physiological in nature—or for monitoring specific events of human movement in daily living, athletic, clinical, or occupational populations. The advantage of wearable devices is that they allow for monitoring human performance continuously and in environments that are outside of a laboratory or clinic with ease. This advantage can help to assess, Int. J. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 3554; doi:10.3390/ijerph17103554 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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