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Development of vibration sensing system with wide dynamic range: monitoring of scratching and turning-over motions during sleep

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Abstract

This paper describes a novel vibration sensing system with wide dynamic range for measuring “scratching”, “turning over” and “sitting up/lying down” motions in an unconstrained manner while the patient is sleeping. The sensing device used in the proposed system is composed of a piezoceramic sensor sandwiched between two metal plates. Under the system’s configuration, each piezoceramic sensor generates a measurable output voltage proportional to the wide-ranging amplitude of vibrations produced by “scratching”, “turning over” and “sitting up/lying down” motions. Furthermore, in order to detect the direction of “turning over” and “sitting up/lying down” motions, we defined two indices that could be calculated based on three output signals from the piezoceramic sensors placed under three legs of the bed. A validity experiment was carried out for comparison with a conventional sensing method for measuring “scratching”, “turning over” and “sitting up/lying down” motions. The results showed that the proposed vibration sensing system is valid in terms of accuracy without the need for attaching sensors to the patient’s body.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Science and Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University, 5-10-1 Fuchinobe, Chuo-ku, Sagamihara-shi, Kanagawa, 252-5258, Japan

    Yosuke Kurihara & Takashi Kaburagi

  2. Advanced Science Department, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan

    Kajiro Watanabe

  3. Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Hiroshi Tanaka

Authors
  1. Yosuke Kurihara
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  2. Takashi Kaburagi
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  3. Kajiro Watanabe
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  4. Hiroshi Tanaka
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Correspondence to Yosuke Kurihara.

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Kurihara, Y., Kaburagi, T., Watanabe, K. et al. Development of vibration sensing system with wide dynamic range: monitoring of scratching and turning-over motions during sleep. Artif Life Robotics 20, 372–378 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-015-0241-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-015-0241-x

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