Haptic feedback and human performance in a wearable sensor system

Breathing is an unconscious and unheeded function occurs about 20,000 times per day and 10 million times per year by a healthy individual. Unlike other unconscious functions of the body, breathing can be controlled and regulated voluntarily. Breathing therapy was introduced to help people gradually refine their breathing patterns in terms of respiration rate and volume. It is very important for people to perform the exact instructions since otherwise it may cause lung problems. Therefore, the breath specialists and physicians try to provide instructions and feedback over multiple practice sessions. To overcome these limitations, this work proposes and investigates artificial tactile stimuli for providing instructions and feedback on performance of breathing exercises in real time. The proposed system comprises of a single wearable sensor that models the breathing functions from the interior/posterior motions of the subject's umbilical region integrated with a vibration motor to provide haptic biofeedback during breathing therapy. The results are investigated based on five different yogic breathing patterns with 10 healthy volunteers. Experimental tests have shown more than 40% improvement in users' performance in breathing therapy when applying haptic feedback. This shows a potential to enrich the quality of wearable and portable advisory-based systems through the touch channel.