Poor posture is an epidemic for nearly anyone who spends an excessive amount of time sitting, and this can lead to a whole host of problems later in life. Some of these might include back pain, limited range of motion, and muscle tightness. Recognizing that his own posture was lacking, element14 user vlasov01 got to work designing and constructing a small wearable device for element14’s Design for a Cause 2021 contest, which could help him alter his posture throughout the day to a more correct one. This project was dubbed the Trakcore, and it uses the sensors on the Arduino Nano 33 IoT to sense how a person is sitting or standing and then sends an alert when they need adjustment. 

Trakcore started with collecting large amounts of data that included positional data for both straight and curved spinal shapes. Next, this dataset was used to train a model within Edge Impulse’s Studio that could infer which position the user is currently in. Once the code to integrate the model with the IMU, vibration motor, LED, and BLE stack was finished, an app was created to receive notifications from the wearable device and display them.

After adjusting some variables within the code and making the wearable ignore posture while the user is walking, the Trakcore was subsequently tested and performed quite well at notifying the wearer when their posture was incorrect. 

You can read more about the Trakcore here.