SmartChair: A Realization of Smart Health Care System based on Cyber-Physical Systems

In this hectic life, people are suffering back pain problem which is getting worse day by day who are not physically fit. These problems are partially caused by an incorrect way of sitting. Sitting a bunch of hours in combination with a false body posture can cause long-term diseases. In order to prevent a not optimal sitting behavior, a cyber-physical systems (CPS) could help to recognize these postures and inform the user. A CPS is understood as a combination of electronical and mechanical devices like microcontrollers, sensors or actuators and embedded software to collect and analyze real-world data. With help of these embedded systems, a sensor-equipped SmartChair could help to recognize and analyze the user's body posture and give recommendations to improve the position on a chair. Therefore, in this paper we propose a SmartChair based on cyber-physical systems. The SmartChair itself is a modular and flexible seat pad which can be placed on almost every chair. This pad contains eight force resistive sensors to measure the users sitting position. These sensors are wired to a microcontroller for measuring this data and transferring it via Bluetooth to a mobile application running on a smartphone. The matching Android App on this Smartphone receives this data and interpolates the user's current sitting position. With this calculated data, the system is able to give specific advises to correct or optimize the users' body posture to prevent backbone diseases.