Smart Floor Mats for a Health Monitoring System Based on Textile Pressure Sensing: Development and Usability Study (Preprint)

Abstract

UNSTRUCTURED Objective Non-face-to-face healthcare service systems have gained widespread interest owing to the rapid development of smart home technology. Particularly, a health monitoring system must be developed to manage patients' health status and send alerts for dangerous situations based on their activity. Therefore, in this study, we present a novel health-monitoring system based on the auto-mapping method, which employs real-time position sensing mats. Materials and Methods The smart floor mats are operated as piezo-resistive devices which are composed of a carbon nanotube based conductive textile, electrodes, main processor circuit, and a mat. The developed smart floor system acquires real-time position information using a multi-connection method between the modules based on the auto-mapping algorithm which automatically creates a spatial map. The auto-mapping algorithm allows the user to freely set various activity areas through floor mapping. Results and Discussions This system automatically acquires the information on the total number, location, and direction information of the mats and creates a spatial map. The position sensing mats can be easily configured with a simple structure by using a carbon nanotube-based piezo-resistive textile. The mats detect the activity in real-time and record location information since they are connected through auto-mapping technology. Conclusion This system allows for the analysis of patients' behavior patterns and the management of health care in online. The proposed smart floor system can serve as the foundation for smart home applications in the future, which include healthcare, intelligent automation, and home security owing to its advantages of low cost, large area, high reliability.