A Monitoring System for Postural Sway Stabilization Using Tactile Stimulation Near the Auricles

In this paper, we propose a monitoring system for evaluating body balance function. In humans, body sway can be controlled to some degree via tactile stimulation near the auricularis. However, evaluation results using this method cannot be shown in real time, and the degree of influence of each stimulation on body balance cannot be evaluated. The proposed system can generate charts in real time, providing evaluation indices by calculating the difference from the average value calculated in advance, in addition to time-series measurement of biological signals, and feature values such as the motion of each limb.In the current experiments, the proposed system was used to perform real-time monitoring. The results revealed, that vibrotactile stimulation near the auricles reduced body sway, and influenced upper body movement and lower limb stabilization.