mmWave Radar for Sit-to-Stand Analysis: A Comparative Study with Wearables and Kinect

TL;DR

This paper investigates using 60GHz mmWave radar for analyzing Sit-to-Stand movements, comparing its effectiveness with Kinect and wearable sensors for potential healthcare applications like fall risk assessment.

Contribution

It introduces a novel non-contact radar-based method for motion analysis, demonstrating its effectiveness and comparing it with existing sensor technologies.

Findings

Radar effectively captures general motion patterns.

Radar is good at detecting large joint movements.

Integrated sensors could improve accuracy.

Abstract

This study explores a novel approach for analyzing Sit-to-Stand (STS) movements using millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar technology. The goal is to develop a non-contact sensing, privacy-preserving, and all-day operational method for healthcare applications, including fall risk assessment. We used a 60GHz mmWave radar system to collect radar point cloud data, capturing STS motions from 45 participants. By employing a deep learning pose estimation model, we learned the human skeleton from Kinect built-in body tracking and applied Inverse Kinematics (IK) to calculate joint angles, segment STS motions, and extract commonly used features in fall risk assessment. Radar extracted features were then compared with those obtained from Kinect and wearable sensors. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of mmWave radar in capturing general motion patterns and large joint movements (e.g., trunk). Additionally, the study highlights the advantages and disadvantages of individual sensors and suggests the potential of integrated sensor technologies to improve the accuracy and reliability of motion analysis in clinical and biomedical research settings.