Wireless human motion acquisition system for rehabilitation assessment

After having suffered an accident with major injuries and fractures, people generally have to be monitored while following physical rehabilitation therapies. The obvious aim is to recover from any undesired/weird motion pattern in order to permit restoring the normal functional capabilities. Among several ways to record patients´ activities, automatic human motion tracking systems are becoming more and more attracting because of their potential. In this paper we describe the low-cost wireless and wearable motion acquisition system that we are currently developing. Our proposal is based on a number of small electronic modules that permit to acquire body motion with accelerometers and transmit the related information to an acquisition device using wireless communication. Automatic processing of the data can then provide objective and quantitative information to be used during rehabilitation by doctors and physiotherapists.