Browsing by Author "Krauter, Christian"

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Open Access
Designing the next smart chair based on a posture recognition and feedback literature review
(2022) Krauter, Christian
Sitting is considered unhealthy, and there is an ongoing trend towards more and longer time spent seated, with no foreseeable end to this development. Research indicates that we should take frequent breaks from sitting and not sit in the same posture for extended periods. Our smart gadgets can already suggest breaks, but for more nuanced feedback about how we sit, special hardware and software are needed, two topics on which much research has already been done. Our contribution to this research is two-fold: First, we conducted a literature review of hardware used to recognize sitting posture and of feedback to help the users be aware of how they sit and suggest ways to do so healthier. Second, we built a smart chair prototype that uses various sensors to measure how the user sits and then provides visual feedback about that. Our literature review shows that recognizing sitting behavior and giving feedback about it can be solved in different ways. Our aim was to give a broad overview of the research area while putting additional focus on pressure-sensing hardware and visual feedback. Based on this, we propose to consider the following factors when selecting techniques: the environment, cost, privacy concerns, portability, and accuracy. Furthermore, the user’s capabilities and preferences should be taken into account. We also found a need for additional and more comprehensive user studies that examine the effects of different types of visual feedback. Our smart chair prototype is equipped with four pressure sensors in the seat and three distance-measuring sensors in the backrest. We consider our prototype to be an initial starting point for further work that aims to extend our approach. One possible extension would be to add a sitting posture classification algorithm. Other feedback variants could also be added and evaluated through user studies to gain more knowledge about different methods and their effects on sitting behavior. Furthermore, we suggest future work to expand upon our literature review to get a broader understanding of sitting posture recognition and feedback.