Smart garment and method for detection of body kinematics and physical state

• US 10,182,760 B2
• Filed: 03/14/2016
• Issued: 01/22/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 08/20/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Raytheon BBN Technlogies Corp. (Rtx Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Raytheon BBN Technlogies Corp. (Rtx Corporation)
• Inventors: Nicoletti, Michael John, Ritter, Scott Evan, Beal, Jacob Stuart Michael, Daily, Matthew Patrick, Holmes, Jason David, Park, Christopher Glenn
• Primary Examiner(s): Thangavelu, Kandasamy
• Application Number:
  US15/069,916
• Publication Number:
  US 20160192882A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,044 Days
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/01 Measuring temperature of body parts ; Diagnostic temperature sensing, e.g. for malignant or inflamed tissue clinical contact thermometers G01K13/20
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/11 Measuring movement of the entire body or parts thereof, e.g. head or hand tremor, mobility of a limb for measuring pulse A61B5/02 ;A61B5/1038 takes precedence; motion detection to correct for motion artifacts in physiological signals A61B5/721
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1118 Determining activity level
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/112 Gait analysis
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1123 Discriminating type of movement, e.g. walking or running A61B5/1116, A61B5/112 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/24 Detecting, measuring or recording bioelectric or biomagnetic signals of the body or parts thereof
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/389 Electromyography [EMG]
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4585 Evaluating the knee
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4595 Evaluating the ankle
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/6804 Garments; Clothes
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7275 Determining trends in physiological measurement data; Predicting development of a medical condition based on physiological measurements, e.g. determining a risk factor
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 15/02 electric
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 17/00 Three dimensional [3D] modelling, e.g. data description of 3D objects

Abstract

A body garment including sensors distributed throughout the garment, each sensor senses body state information from a local surface area of a body; and sensor nodes in proximity to the plurality of sensors, each sensor node including a processor to receive sensing body state information from at least one of the plurality of sensors. Each processor is configured to receive body state information locally from sensors, to utilize the information to determine a local surface shape of the surface of a portion of the body part; and to exchange local surface shape information with neighboring sensor nodes. At least one processor of utilizes the local surface shape information received from the sensor nodes to generate one overall model of a surface shape of the entire surface of the body part covered by the garment.

Claims

1. A body garment for detecting body kinematics and controlling an actuator comprising:

a plurality of sensors distributed throughout the garment and electrically coupled in a mesh configuration, each sensor being positioned in the body garment to sense body pose and muscle activation information from a local surface area of a body part covered by the garment; and

a processor electrically coupled to the plurality of sensors,

wherein the processor;

receives body pose and muscle activation information from the plurality of sensors;

utilizes the body pose and muscle activation information to determine a local surface shape of a surface of a portion of the body part covered by said one or more sensors;

utilizes the local surface shape to generate one overall model of a surface shape of an entire surface of the body part covered by the garment;

generates body kinematics information for the body part, from said overall model; and

controls the actuator for one or more of mechanically assisting walking, running or integration of a prosthetic limb using said body kinematics information.

2. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said processor adaptively controls said actuator and responds to feedback provided by the plurality of sensors, or data streams coming from external devices.

3. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said processor generates body kinematics information by taking snap shots of overall model at different times and compares the snap shots.

4. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said overall model includes a rate of change of the surface shape over time, and wherein said processor generates body kinematics information using said rate of change of the surface shape.

5. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said body kinematics information include one or more of body pose, gait, and muscle activation of a subject wearing the garment.

6. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said body pose and muscle activation information include one or more of skin surface temperature, electrical nerve impulses, and whether a subject wearing the garment has been at rest or is warmed up.

7. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said processor includes an interface for driving the actuator for one or more of a haptic feedback device for delivering injury warnings, a biomechanical system for analyzing metabolic activity or athletic load endured by a subject wearing the garment, and a health monitoring system.

8. The body garment of claim 1, wherein the body garment comprises of a plurality of different portions, each portion configured to be coupled to and decoupled from the other portions.

9. The body garment of claim 1, wherein a first subset of the plurality of sensors located on critical regions of the body part is configured to operate faster and denser than a second subset of the plurality of the sensors located on stable regions of the body part.

10. The body garment of claim 1, wherein the plurality of sensors are configured in a plurality of manifolds, each manifold of group of sensors including a set of similar and related sensors in close proximity of each other that respond in an ordered distribution, wherein the body garment is capable of losing some fraction of sensors or displacement of some of the sensors on the garment and still generate said body pose and muscle activation information.

11. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said processor performs adaptive processing to tune the local surface shape to command a plurality of actuators.

12. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said processor changes degrees of freedom being measured by the garment according to the time of day, the temperature, and the health of a subject wearing the garment.

13. The body garment of claim 1, wherein said processor determines the local surface shape of the surface of a portion of the body part covered by said one or more sensors using geometric processing.

14. A method for detecting body kinematics and controlling an actuator comprising:

collecting pose and muscle activation information from a plurality of local surface areas of a body part covered by a garment, from a plurality of sensors distributed throughout the garment covering the body part and electrically coupled in a mesh configuration;

in real time, processing, using a processor, the collected body pose and muscle activation information of local surface areas to determine a local surface shape of a surface of a portion of the body part covered by the local surface areas;

generating, using the processor, one overall model of a surface shape of the entire surface of the body part covered by the garment, from the local surface shape;

generating, using the processor, body kinematics information for the body part, from said overall model; and

controlling, using the processor, an actuator for one or more of mechanically assisting walking, running or integration of a prosthetic limb using said body kinematics information.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising receiving feedback from the processor or from external devices;

and using said feedback and said body kinematics information to adaptively control an actuator.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein said overall model includes a rate of change of the surface shape over time, and further comprising generating body kinematics information using said rate of change of the surface shape.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising changing degrees of freedom being measured by the processor according to the time of day, the temperature, and the health of a subject wearing the garment.