A Non-contact Human Body Height and Weight Measurement Approach Using Ultrasonic Sensor

Abstract

Human body height and weight are the key factors for personal health monitoring and many works have been conducted to accurately and conveniently measure these two physiology parameters. However, in many conditions such as in the outer space, measuring human body weight becomes impossible for traditional approaches such as using weight scale. In this paper, we present a medical instrument, called the Ultrasonic Measurer to measure human body height and weight using a non-contact approach. This is a low-cost, efficient device to estimate human body sizes using an ultrasonic sensor, the SRF04. This sensor provides good measurements in close distance over a range up to 300 cm. Moreover, we present a convenient approach to estimate human body weight from the measured sizes using the close relationship between a human body’s weight and its sizes, despite the variation in shapes. The measurements and estimations were implemented on a set of 50 men and women with different body shapes. The proposed method proved to give good results as the sizes are estimated with the average error of less than 0.3% and weight is estimated with the average error of less than 2.8%. The module is currently designed to be used as a standalone device. In the future, the module is equipped with the Internet of Things (IoT) for various remote health monitoring applications.