Wearable Sensors for Human Movement Monitoring in Biomedical Applications: Case Studies

The research on wearable sensors for human movement monitoring is motivated by the diffusion of the reduction of the motor skills in a large part of European and World population. With the ageing of the population, this figure is expected to rise dramatically in the next 10 years. Wearable sensor systems aid and assist the patients during their rehabilitation programs, also at home, and support the doctor during both rehabilitation therapy and monitoring operations, giving him/her quantitative values of human movements. Therefore, wearable sensors can be the answer to the need for patient care, reducing the costs of the health facilities and promoting at the same time the health and wellbeing. In this paper, an analysis of different case studies regarding wearable sensors for human movement monitoring is proposed. The aim is to identify the common characteristics and give at the same time different common design strategies that can be adopted and considered in the design of these wearable sensors.