Determination of locations on a tactile sensor suitable for respiration and heartbeat measurement of a person on a bed

Sleep monitoring systems that can be used in daily life for the assessment of personal health and early detection of diseases are needed. To this end, we are developing a system for unconstrained measurement of the lying posture, respiration and heartbeat of a person on a soft rubber-based tactile sensor sheet. The respiration and heartbeat signals can be detected from only particular locations on the tactile sensor, and the locations depend on the lying location and posture of the measured person. In this paper, we describe how to determine the measurement locations on the sensor. We also report a realtime program that detects the respiration rate and the heart rate by using this method.