Use of Head-Mounted Inertial Sensors for Mobility Tasks: Protocol for a Scoping Review

Abstract

Background: Human activity recognition (HAR) is the use of technology to detect a person's movements. Sensors can be passive like cameras monitoring an area, or active like those attached to a person's watch. HAR is a burgeoning field whose uses span from personal health tracking to at-home physical degradation monitoring. The benefit of having sensors attached to a person for constant HAR tracking can be seen in the personal fitness field where people track their number of steps or distance ran. For older adults, HAR can be used in combination with mobility tasks like sit-to-stand, timed-up-and-go, and other tasks to monitor a person's ability to be self-sufficient and to live alone at home. Together, HAR and mobility tasks are an effective method to measure health, especially in older adults. Consumer wearables like Fitbits and Apple watches are currently being used to measure many of these mobility tasks. The wide adoption of these devices is a result of their ease of use and simplicity. Despite this, most wearables go unused shortly after purchase. A potential solution is the use of consumer devices that are already adopted like headphones or hearing aids. These devices can perform the same measurements as the wearables but have the advantage of being used for other reasons than health monitoring. Despite this, no scoping review has summarized the current capabilities of what can be done using head-worn sensors.

Objective: We aim to understand how head-worn devices have been used to monitor dynamic mobility tasks and if they have been compared to traditional methods (like smartwatches or in-sole sensors).

Methods: This scoping review will be guided by the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) framework. There is no time limit to when the papers must have been published. The databases included in the search are PubMed, Engineering Village, SCOPUS, and Web of Science. Using pre-established inclusion and exclusion criteria, 2 reviewers will screen each paper. We will follow 3 stages of the screening process: abstract and title screening, full-text screening, and full-text data extraction.

Results: The search will be started once this scoping review protocol is published.

Conclusions: Head-mounted devices have become part of everyday life and many already contain accelerometers or inertial measurement units. This scoping review will examine how these sensors have already been used in research to measure mobility tasks, and determine how consumer devices can be adapted to improve the lives of regular people.

International registered report identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/67628.

Keywords: accelerometer; human activity recognition; inertial measurement unit; inertial sensor; mobility; sensor; wearable device, scoping review.