Human Motion Tracking and Measurement by a Mobile Robot

Abstract

Our ultimate goal is to develop autonomous mobile home healthcare and rehabilitation robots which closely monitor and evaluate the patients’ motor function, and their at-home training therapy process, providing automatically calling for medical personnel in emergency situations. The robots to be developed will bring about cost-effective, safe and easier at-home rehabilitation to most motor-function impaired patients (MIPs), and meanwhile, relieve therapists from great burden in canonical rehabilitation. In this study, we have developed control algorithms for a mobile robot to track and follow human by 3 different viewpoints: side view, front view and middle angle of human, and algorithms for  measurements of knee angle. The accuracy of joint measurement was also investigated. Due to the skeleton point mixing-up and frame flying, the error was very big. However, after applying a colored mark compensation algorithm, the error could be corrected to a certain extent. This shows the feasibility of joint trajectory measurement through the mobile robots in real time and in a broad indoor environment.