New wearable technologies for monitoring mobility and preventing issues in real-life conditions

Instrumental analysis of movement is fundamental important in various disciplines and sectors, ranging from biomechanical modeling to early diagnosis and prevention of neuro-muscular pathologies. It assists specialists to develop individual therapy programs and monitoring the effectiveness of adopted strategies.  

In particular, wearable sensors are becoming increasingly important because the collection of a wide range of data on human body movement directly in real life conditions. Recent scientific studies have also shown that wearable sensors play a fundamental role in the early detection of neuro-muscular diseases, thus facilitating early and more effective treatment. 

Thanks to the NODES project, the groups of the Politecnico di Torino led by Professor Andrea Cereatti (Department of Electronics and Telecommunications) and Professor Gabriella Olmo (Department of Automation and Computer Science), have sinergically started to develop a new generation of innovative solutions for monitoring patients in real-life conditions.  

All this is possible thanks to the complementary skills of the two research groups that integrate various technologies such as magneto-inertial sensors, pressure insoles and infrared distance sensors together with deep learning algorithms. 

This multi-sensor technology allows to obtain parameters that can characterize the stability of patients and therefore predict the risk of falls as well as to recognize and identify early freezing of gait in patients suffering from Parkinson's disease.