A Wireless Accelerometer-Based Body Posture Stability Detection System and Its Application for Meditation Practitioners

Sensors

Kang-Ming Chang¹  Sih-Huei Chen²  Hsin-Yi Lee³  Congo Tak-Shing Ching⁴ 

[1] Department of Photonics and Communication Engineering, Asia University, Taichung 41354, Taiwan; E-Mail:;Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Asia University, Taichung 41354, Taiwan; E-Mail:;Department of Psychology, Asia University, Taichung 41354, Taiwan; E-Mail:;Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chi Nan University, Nantou 54561, Taiwan; E-Mail:

关键词: KW = Posture Stability;    wireless tri-Axis accelerator;    meditation;    leg crossing;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s121217620

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The practice of meditation has become an interesting research issue in recent decades. Meditation is known to be beneficial for health improvement and illness reduction and many studies on meditation have been made, from both the physiological and psychological points of view. It is a fundamental requirement of meditation practice to be able to sit without body motion. In this study, a novel body motion monitoring and estimation system has been developed. A wireless tri-axis accelerometer is used to measure body motion. Both a mean and maximum motion index is derived from the square summation of three axes. Two experiments were conducted in this study. The first experiment was to investigate the motion index baseline among three leg-crossing postures. The second experiment was to observe posture dynamics for thirty minute’s meditation. Twenty-six subjects participated in the experiments. In one experiment, thirteen subjects were recruited from an experienced meditation group (meditation experience > 3 years); and the other thirteen subjects were beginners (meditation experience < 1 years). There was a significant posture stability difference between both groups in terms of either mean or maximum parameters (p < 0.05), according to the results of the experiment. Results from another experiment showed that the motion index is different for various postures, such as full-lotus < half-lotus < non-lotus.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland