Collaborative, Social-Networked Posture Training with Posturing Monitoring and Biofeedback

This chapter presents an application of biofeedback techniques to train people to be aware of their bad posture to timely improve the posture. We design and develop a collaborative, social-networked posture training (CSPT) tool, which is composed of a sophisticated wearable posture training headset, a training belt, a social network App and cloud storage and computing services. The wearable posture training headset is equipped with real-time sensors to monitor head and neck posture. The training belt is used with a smartphone to monitor the lumbar-spine and low back posture. Biofeedbacks of sound, voice and vibration in the smartphone are sent to people to remind their poor posture. In the CSPT App, people can glance over their friends’ posture performance to encourage good posture. Experiment results show that the proposed approach is very effective in increasing people’s good posture percentage of time. Social support and peer influences are important and effective to encourage the people in maintaining good posture and in being willing to spend longer time in wearing the posture training tool.