Measuring Gait Speed Using Temporal and Location-Aware Sensing Services in Smart Homes

Gait velocity has been considered the sixth vital sign. It can not only be used to estimate the survival rate of the elderly but also to predict the tendency of falling. Unfortunately, gait velocity is required to be measured using specially designed walk path with minimal walk distance, which has to be conducted at clinics or health institutes. Wearable tracking services using accelerometer or inertial measurement unit can measure the velocity for certain time interval but not all the time due to lack of sustainable energy source. To tackle the shortcoming of wearable sensors, this work develops the framework to measure gait velocity using distributed tracking services deployed indoor. Given the numerous errors caused by remote sensing, the framework takes into account the temporal and spatial relationship among tracking services to calibrate the tracking services systematically. Consequently, the gait velocity can be measured without wearable sensors and at higher accuracy.