Automatic Identification and Localization of Inertial Sensors on the Human Body

Human motion capture is used for many purposes like sports training and rehabilitation. In the last few years, inertial sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes) in combination with magnetic sensors was proven to be a suitable ambulatory alternative to traditional human motion tracking systems based on optical position measurements, which are restricted to a bounded area. While accurate full 6 degrees of freedom information is available, these inertial sensor systems still have some drawbacks [1, 2]. All sensors have a unique location ID, i.e. each sensor has to be attached to a certain predefined body segment, and they have to be connected by wires. Another disadvantage is the fact that the relative positions and orientations of the sensors with respect to the segments are unknown, which has to be resolved by a sensor-segment calibration procedure. These drawbacks cause the set-up time of the current systems to be relatively large.