Ambient Health Monitoring: The Smartphone as a Body Sensor Network Component

Inertial measurement units used in commercial body sensor networks (e.g. animation suits) are inefficient, difficult to use and expensive when adapted for movement science applications concerning medical and sports science. However, due to advances in micro-electro mechanical sensors, these inertial sensors have become ubiquitous in mobile computing technologies such as smartphones. Smartphones generally use inertial sensors to enhance the interface usability. This paper investigates the use of a smartphone’s inertial sensing capability as a component in body sensor networks. It discusses several topics centered on inertial sensing: body sensor networks, smartphone networks and a prototype framework for integrating these and other heterogeneous devices. The proposed solution is a smartphone application that gathers, processes and filters sensor data for the purpose of tracking physical activity. All networking functionality is achieved by Skeletrix, a framework for gathering and organizing motion data in online repositories that are conveniently accessible to researchers, healthcare professionals and medical care workers.