Smart walker for pervasive healthcare

The article presents the design and implementation of a smart walker based on microwave Doppler radar, MEMS accelerometers, flexible force sensors and Bluetooth communication technologies. The data from the sensing channels are acquired by a microcontroller platform with ADC capabilities, and then are wireless transmitted to an Android OS smart phone that runs specific developed Java software. The software performs different tasks, such as data processing and graphical user interface, and can also be used for remote monitoring of activity/inactivity of the users, upper extremity kinetics and kinematics during walker-assisted gait. Additional synchronization functions are performed between the smart phone and a physiotherapy web server.