Paper Info
Title
LifeChair: A Conductive Fabric Sensor-Based Smart Cushion for Actively Shaping Sitting Posture.
Abstract
The LifeChair is a smart cushion that provides vibrotactile feedback by actively sensing and classifying sitting postures to encourage upright posture and reduce slouching. The key component of the LifeChair is our novel conductive fabric pressure sensing array. Fabric sensors have been explored in the past, but a full sensing solution for embedded real world use has not been proposed. We have designed our system with commercial use in mind, and as a result, it has a high focus on manufacturability, cost-effectiveness and adaptiveness. We demonstrate the performance of our fabric sensing system by installing it into the LifeChair and comparing its posture detection accuracy with our previous study that implemented a conventional flexible printed PCB-sensing system. In this study, it is shown that the LifeChair can detect all 11 postures across 20 participants with an improved average accuracy of 98.1%, and it demonstrates significantly lower variance when interfacing with different users. We also conduct a performance study with 10 participants to evaluate the effectiveness of the LifeChair device in improving upright posture and reducing slouching. Our performance study demonstrates that the LifeChair is effective in encouraging users to sit upright with an increase of 68.1% in time spent seated upright when vibrotactile feedback is activated.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.3390/s18072261
SENSORS
Keywords
Field
DocType
posture,pressure sensing,conductive fabric,haptic feedback,interfaces,cushion,classification
Cushion,Electrical conductor,Mechanical engineering,Electronic engineering,Engineering,Sitting
Journal
Volume
Issue
Citations 
18
7.0
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.37
1
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Karlos Ishac110.71
Kenji Suzuki2195.04