Prevention System of Forward Head Posture Using IMU and Infrared Distance Sensor

Forward head posture (FHP) is representative bad habit causing neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain, dental occlusion, headache etc in modern society. Approaches to prevent FHP were researched by camera sensors such as Kinect and Webcam, which has cost and space limitation caused by installation of the sensors. To compensate the limitations, we proposed wearable device to put it behind user’s ear to provide comfortable, feasible, cost-effectible advantages. Prevention system of FHP composed of three sensors such as IMU, IR distance and vibration sensors. IMU sensor is used to detect sensor positions, and IR distance sensor is used to measure distance between the tragus of the ear and the torso. Vibration sensor gives vibration warning when the system detects FHP. Challenge to detect FHP is that threshold of FHP decision changes to the variables such as sensor position. Result showed that different thresholds depending on sensor positions could detect the FHP by considering IMU sensor and IR distance sensor.