Leveraging Smartphones for Balance Assessment

Author(s) Information

Kelly Graham, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis ObispoFollow

College - Author 1

College of Engineering

Department - Author 1

Mechanical Engineering Department

Advisor

Eric Ocegueda, College of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering Department

Funding Source

Cal Poly College of Engineerng

Date

10-2025

Abstract/Summary

Assessment of human balance provides valuable metrics to track the health, development, and fall risk of individuals. The prominent method for objective balance assessments has used force plates to track the center of pressure (COP) position as a participant attempts to balance during varying tasks. However, the use of force plates is limited by the cost of equipment and expertise required, leading to recent interest in using embedded inertial measurement units (IMUs) in mobile devices instead. Many researchers have explored placing mobile devices close to the subject’s center of mass (COM) to approximate the subject’s COM acceleration and using the COM acceleration as an alternative to COP measurements for balance assessment. Recently, as part of Cal Poly’s Mobile Balance Lab (MBL) Master’s project, we have developed a methodology to use cameras to aid in tracking both COM acceleration and COP position with a smartphone placed anywhere on a participant. The proposed project aims to build off the current methodology and code to improve the accuracy and accessibility of the model for use as a mobile balance lab. The goals include (1) removing the need for the camera system by using anatomical measurements and dynamics to track relative positions and (2) using the double inverted pendulum model to improve the COP position estimate using smartphones. One SURP student (from ME, AERO, BMED, or other related disciplines) will work on familiarizing themselves with the developed method and MATLAB code, explore the literature on the statistical variance of anatomical measurements, develop equations of motion to approximate human balance as a double inverted pendulum, modify the existing MATLAB code to implement subroutines for goals (1) and (2). Students should indicate in their application if they are interested in continuing work on the project during the academic year for independent study course credit.

October 1, 2025.