Walker behavior detection apparatus

• US 20070072158A1
• Filed: 09/28/2006
• Published: 03/29/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/29/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi Advanced Systems Corp. (Hitachi, Ltd.), Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi Advanced Systems Corp. (Hitachi, Ltd.), Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Unuma, Munetoshi, Inoue, Hideki, Otsu, Fumitaka, Satou, Shinobu, Higuchi, So
• Granted Patent: US 7,811,203 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 434/247
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2560/0242 adapted to measure environmental factors, e.g. temperature, pollution
• 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 5/1112 Global tracking of patients, e.g. by using GPS
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 22/006 Pedometers
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/23 Recognition of whole body movements, e.g. for sport training

Abstract

A behavior of a walker is detected according to combination of detection of the walking behavior on a level and an altitude variation of the walker to more accurately detect the behavior of the walker. A burned calorie can be obtained according to the type of the walking behavior. An altitude variation can be obtained more accurately by integrating altitude variation only at sections with vertical movement during walking. A stride is estimated according to the behavior of the walker in consideration of the vertical movement. Obtained position and traveling direction are used for compensating values in inertial navigation system. The behavior with and without vertical movement is used in a walker navigator and a worker observing system including a worker terminal carried by the walker for detecting the behavior of the worker and a worker observing terminal for providing the detected position and behavior of the walker.

Claims

1. A walking behavior detection apparatus for a walker comprising:

detecting means for detecting a horizontal walking behavior of a walker regarding a level;

altitude variation detecting means for detecting altitude variation of the walker; and

estimating means for estimating a walking behavior of the walker on the basis of a combination of the horizontal walking behavior and the detected altitude variation.

2. The walker behavior detection apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the detecting means detects a behavior variation of the walker to generate a behavior variation signal and detects an amount of characteristic from the behavior variation signal using at least one of acceleration variation detection means for detecting an acceleration variation of the walker, means for detecting variation in electric field intensity, and a gyro sensor.

3. The walker behavior detection apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the altitude variation detecting means comprises at least one of a barometric pressure sensor, a GPS unit, and an altitude detection means for detecting an altitude using a Radio Frequency Identification unit.

4. The walker behavior detection apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

a table showing a relation between a walking behavior and corresponding burned calorie; and

obtaining means for obtaining and outputting a burned calorie of the walker with reference to the table and the detected second behavior.

5. The walker behavior detection apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

vertical movement extracting means for extracting at least a section on which the walker walks where the second behavior shows the vertical movement and detecting an altitude variation in the extracted section; and

integrating means for integrating the altitude variation of the walker only in the extracted section to determine an altitude variation of the walker.

6. The walker behavior detection apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

stride estimating means for, when the detecting means detects the walking behavior as walking on a level, estimating a stride of walking on the level; and

compensating means for, when the detecting means detects the second behavior as walking accompanied with the vertical movement, compensating the stride on the basis of the second behavior to obtain a moving speed and a traveling distance of the walker in accordance with the stride estimating means.

9. The walker behavior detection apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

a navigation unit including a geographical database for storing geographical data and an outputting unit for providing navigation information to the walker on the basis of the detected second behavior and the geographical data.

10. The walker behavior detection apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

a worker terminal, including the recognizing means, carried by the walker; and

a worker observing terminal, separated from the worker terminal, having communication unit for communicating with the worker terminal, for outputting the detected second behavior.

7. A walker behavior detection apparatus comprising:

walker behavior detecting means for detecting a behavior of a walker;

a storage for storing geographical information corresponding to the detected behavior of the walker; and

searching means for searching a part of the geographical information corresponding to the detected behavior of the walker to detect position information and traveling direction information on the basis of the searched part.

8. The walker behavior detection apparatus as claimed in claim 7, further comprising:

an inertial navigation system including an acceleration sensor for detecting a position and a traveling direction of the walker; and

compensating means for compensating the position information and the traveling direction information from the inertial navigation system on the basis of the detected position and traveling direction.