A Smart Portable Mat That Can Meausre Sitting Plantar Pressure Distribution with a High Resolution

摘要

Due to the rapid development of information technology, sitting in front of a computer for learning, working, and entertainment has become the norm of our daily life. Keeping a good sitting posture is vital to our health. Sitting plantar pressure distribution is an important biomechanical parameter that can reflect the ergonomics of sitting posture. This study presented a low-cost smart portable sitting mat that can measure the sitting plantar pressure distribution in real time. This smart mat consisted of 576 pressure sensing arrays made by a low-cost E-Textile. The sensing arrays were arranged in a matrix form. And a Voltage Feedback Non-Scanning Electrode (VF-NSE) method was used to eliminate the cross-talk effect due to the interconnected sensing arrays. And a cubit interpolation method further was used to increase the “virtual resolution” of this smart mat up to 43,376. A pilot experimental study was carried out to demonstrate that this smart mat can be applied to monitor the sitting plantar pressure distribution in different sitting postures and provide pressure information in details.