Intelligent Posture Monitoring System

With the shift to at-home work due to the Covid-19 pandemic, longer hours are spent sitting in front of a computer without proper ergonomic seating available in most home-office settings. Most home office arrangements often lack the necessary back support needed for prolonged periods of sedentary work. The goal of the proposed system is to automatically track a user's postural positions throughout the day through the use of a non-invasive, wearable system and automatically provide feedback from an algorithm to warn the user to correct or change their poor posture. This is done by placing magnets in the form of a rectangular grid on a shirt as well as an MMR sensor on the chest of the body. The onboard magnetic sensor records the data values from the grid of magnetics, which is then, along with data recorded from the onboard accelerometer, analyzed to determine the position of the user. A trained algorithm recognizes and automatically detects the spinal position of the user from the recorded data points and provides direction to alter their posture. These recommendations act as a warning system and allow the user to self-monitor and correct their own behavior to prevent back and neck pain and reduce the chance of long-lasting damage that can result from poor posture.