Wireless Multi-sensor Physio-Motion Measurement and Synchronization System and Method for HRI Research

There is a strong demand for acquisition, processing and understanding of a variety of physiological and behavioral signals from the measurements in human-robot interface (HRI). However, multiple data streams from these measurements bring considerable challenges for their synchronizations, either for offline analysis or for online HRI applications, especially when the sensors are wirelessly connected, without synchronization mechanisms, such as a network-time-protocol. In this paper, we presented a full wireless multi-modality sensor system comprising biopotential measurements such as EEG, EMG and inertial parameter data of articulated body-limb motions. In the paper, we propose two methods to synchronize and calibrate the transmission latencies from different wireless channels. The first method employs the traditional artificial electrical timing signal. The other one employs the force-acceleration relationship governed by Newton’s Second Law to facilitate reconstruction of the sample-to-sample alignment between the two wireless sensors. The measured latencies are investigated and the result show that they could be determined consistently and accurately by the devised techniques.