UoM develops a shoe that can monitor diabetic patient's activities

 

A research group from Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Moratuwa developed a novel bio medical system for the benefit of patients suffering from diabetics, high blood pressure, neurological diseases and Parkinson’s disease with a remote monitoring capability of their walking patterns and activities in real time. Cutting-edge technologies such as Internet of Things and 3D 

printing were adapted to their system development.

Eranga De Silva

Dr. Ranjith Amarasinghe

This project was a final year undergraduate project of Peshan Sampath, Eranga De Silva and Lakshitha Sameera of Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Moratuwa that carried out under the supervision of Senior Lecturer and the in-charge of Mechatronic Engineering Stream Dr. Ranjith Amarasinghe.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people and having the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. 3D printing also expands new paths in the field of manufacturing engineering with its additive manufacturing techniques.

Lakshitha Sameera

“First, we designed a pair of shoe and 3D printable shoe insoles to incorporate force sensors and aligned them to vital points in the foot. A microcontroller development board fixed inside the heel of the shoe is used to capture force sensor outputs of those vital pressure points of heels. Then the system is developed so that captured useful data to transmit to the main controller of the system located on a waist belt of the patient via Bluetooth. Further, we used GSM to transmit useful information to the IoT server for further processing and decision making.”, research group explained their technical description of the system.

Peshan Sampath

Their developed system, a combination of a pair of shoes and a waist belt transmitting information to IoT server and then further processed so that, in real-time it could identify the activity of the patient who wears the system, remotely. Also, the Android application specially developed for this system allows the same to remotely identify activities carrying out by the patient remotely. As an example, day-to-day activities such as walking, running, standing, sitting, sleeping and much more among the recognizable activities of the patient which further let the user maintain past activity record in the IoT cloud.

“A patient who is recovering after a surgery can be remotely monitored by physicians with this system and capable of generating a report with activities carried out by the patient. It let the physicians to remotely access the recovery stage of the patient. This developed system also capable of sending notification to an assigned person in an emergency with the location identified using GPS, via SMS where it need urgent attention. Due to this capability, our research can be incorporated as a remote caring platform for elderly persons to avoid danger that can happened to them.”, researchers said.

The research team was able to publish their research in The 5^th IEEE Global Conference on Consumer Electronics (GCCE 2016) held at Kyoto, Japan.

Research team extended their profuse gratitude to the Senate Research Committee (SRC) of the University of Moratuwa for the given assistance, Mr.SalithRanasinghe and Mr.ChathuraJeewantha of Mechatronics Systems Laboratory of Mechanical Engineering Department for the support given towards the success of this project. Further, they took this opportunity to thank every party who help them in carrying out this research.