Sensor fusion for activity identification

• US 8,784,309 B2
• Filed: 10/23/2013
• Issued: 07/22/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: DP Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: Kinsolving, Arthur, Christensen, Mark Andrew, Lee, Brian Y., Vogel, David, Kahn, Philippe Richard
• Primary Examiner(s): RICHMAN, GLENN E
• Application Number:
  US14/061,701
• Publication Number:
  US 20140046223A1
• Time in Patent Office: 272 Days
• Field of Search: 482 1- 9, 482900-902, 340/573.1, 600/300
• US Class Current: 600/300
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2562/0219 Inertial sensors, e.g. accelerometers, gyroscopes, tilt switches
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2562/08 Sensors provided with means for identification, e.g. barcodes or memory chips
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0022 Monitoring a patient using a global network, e.g. telephone networks, internet
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1038 Measuring plantar pressure during gait
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1112 Global tracking of patients, e.g. by using GPS
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1113 Local tracking of patients, e.g. in a hospital or private home
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1118 Determining activity level
• 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 5/4866 Evaluating metabolism A61B5/083 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/6898 Portable consumer electronic devices, e.g. music players, telephones, tablet computers
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7221 Determining signal validity, reliability or quality A61B5/7207 and A61B5/7217 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7278 Artificial waveform generation or derivation, e.g. synthesising signals from measured signals A61B5/327 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/49 whereby the further system is an inertial position system, e.g. loosely-coupled
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 482/901 having computer circuitry

Abstract

A mobile device monitors accelerations using one or more inertial sensors. A user activity is identified based on the accelerations. A first estimation is made of a user activity statistic associated with the user activity based on the accelerations. Location information is obtained by one or more location based sensors. A second estimation is made of the user activity statistic based on the location information. The user activity statistic is calculated based on the first estimation and the second estimation.

Claims

1. An mobile device to monitor human activity using multiple sensors comprising:

a plurality of sensors;

a dedicated processing unit receiving data from the plurality of sensors, the dedicated processing unit to process sensor data, the dedicated processing unit further comprising a calculating logic to compare a first estimation of a user activity statistic based on data from a first sensor with a second estimation of a user activity statistic based on data from a second sensor, to calculate a first accuracy of the first estimation and a second accuracy of the second estimation, and to calculate the user activity statistic based on the first estimation and the second estimation, wherein the calculated user activity statistic is a result of a weighted combination of the first estimation and the second estimation based on the first accuracy and the second accuracy; and

a central processing unit to perform functions in the mobile device.

2. The mobile device of claim 1, further comprising:

a transmission system to transmit at least a subset of the data from the plurality of sensors to an external computing device, to generate the user activity statistic.

3. The mobile device of claim 2, wherein the subset of the data is transmitted to the external computing device after the user activity ends.

4. The mobile device of claim 2, wherein the externally calculated user activity statistic includes a reconstruction of an event that started when the user activity was initially detected and ended when the user activity ceased to be detected.

5. The mobile device of claim 1, wherein the user activity statistic is one of a distance traveled, a route traveled, a speed of travel, a current position or a periodic human motion count.

6. The mobile device of claim 1, further comprising:

the plurality of sensors including a location sensor and a motion sensor; and

the calculating logic to verify the calculated user activity based on location information.

7. The mobile device of claim 1, further comprising:

the plurality of sensors including a location sensor and a motion sensor; and

the calculating logic to verify location information based on accelerations from the motion sensor and past location information from the location sensor.

8. The mobile device of claim 1, further comprising:

the plurality of sensors including a location sensor; and

the central processing unit to receive location information from the location sensor, and when the location information indicates that a user is at a particular location, the central processing unit to automatically perform a preconfigured action.

9. A system to monitor human activity using multiple sensors comprising:

a mobile device comprising;

a plurality of sensors;

a dedicated processing unit receiving data from the plurality of sensors, the dedicated processing unit to process sensor data,

the dedicated processing unit further comprising a calculating logic to compare a first estimation of a user activity statistic based on data from a first sensor with a second estimation of a user activity statistic based on data from a second sensor, and calculating the user activity statistic based on the first estimation and the second estimation, wherein the calculated user activity statistic is a result of a weighted combination of the first estimation and the second estimation; and

a central processing unit to perform functions in the mobile device; and

a server coupled to the mobile device via a network, the server providing a remote calculating logic to perform a portion of the calculations for the calculating logic in the mobile device.

10. The system of claim 9, further comprising:

the mobile device including a transmission system to transmit at least a subset of the data from the plurality of sensors to the server, to generate the user activity statistic.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the subset of the data is transmitted to the server after the user activity ends.

12. The system of claim 10, further comprising:

the server to reconstruct of an event that started when the user activity was initially detected and ended when the user activity ceased to be detected.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the user activity statistic is one of a distance traveled, a route traveled, a speed of travel, a current position or a periodic human motion count.

14. The system of claim 9, the mobile device further comprising:

the plurality of sensors including a location sensor and a motion sensor; and

the calculating logic to verify the calculated user activity based on location information.

15. The system of claim 9, the mobile device further comprising:

the plurality of sensors including a location sensor and a motion sensor; and

the calculating logic to verify location information based on accelerations from the motion sensor and past location information from the location sensor.

16. The system of claim 9, the mobile device further comprising:

the plurality of sensors including a location sensor; and

the central processing unit to receive location information from the location sensor, and when the location information indicates that a user is at a particular location, the central processing unit to automatically perform a preconfigured action.

17. A mobile device to monitor human activity using multiple sensors comprising:

a plurality of sensors;

a processor to receive data from the plurality of sensors, and to calculate a first estimate having a first calculated accuracy and a second estimate having a second calculated accuracy for a user activity statistic;

the processor to calculate a composite user activity statistic based on a weighted average of the first and the second estimate, the weighting based on the first and the second calculated accuracy.

18. The mobile device of claim 17, further comprising:

a transmission system to transmit at least a subset of the data from the plurality of sensors to an external computing device, to generate one or more of;

the estimate and the calculated accuracy for the user activity statistic.

19. The mobile device of claim 18, wherein the external computing device further is to create a reconstruction of an event that started when the human activity was initially detected and ended when the human activity ceased to be detected.

20. The mobile device of claim 17, further comprising:

the plurality of sensors including a location sensor and a motion sensor; and

a calculating logic to verify location information based on accelerations from the motion sensor and location information from the location sensor.