A Posture Recognition Method Based on Indoor Positioning Technology

Posture recognition has been widely applied in fields such as physical training, environmental awareness, human-computer-interaction, surveillance system and elderly health care. The traditional methods consist of two main variations: machine vision methods and acceleration sensor methods. The former has the disadvantages of privacy invasion, high cost and complex implementation processes, while the latter has low recognition rate for still postures. A new body posture recognition scheme based on indoor positioning technology is presented in this paper. A single deployed indoor positioning system is constructed by installing wearable receiving tags at key points of the human body. The distance measurement method with ultra-wide band (UWB) radio is applied to position the key points of human body. Posture recognition is implemented by positioning. In the posture recognition algorithm, least square estimation (LSE) method and the improved extended Kalman filtering (iEKF) algorithm are respectively adopted to suppress the noise of the distances measurement and to improve the accuracy of positioning and recognition. The comparison of simulation results with the two methods shows that the improved extended Kalman filtering algorithm is more effective in error performance.