FRL in InsurTech Expo

Our lab has collaborations with Tactonic and Physical Therapy department on pressure sensing and VR rehabilitation projects. So we are invited to attend InsurTech Science and Engineering Innovation Expo 2018. The expo is an opportunity to connect insurance companies to technical experts and help them share innovations in data analytics and digital technology products.

NYU is one of the organizers, so the first day of the event was held in our lab. Except for the talks provided by Ken and a few other faculties from NYU, we have two demos showed at the expo. One is the floor sensor walking trail, which consists of 6 pieces of Tactonic pressure sensor in a 3×2 layout. People can walk on the trail and see their footprint in real-time. Compared to the commercial optical motion capture system, the pressure sensor makes it possible to monitor the pressure variations and helps clinicians to analyze the weight shifting during gait. Optical motion capture systems are doing a great job in tracking positions and orientations, they track the human body as rigid body components, so they are not capable of revealing weight shifting caused by the muscle movement which is not related to position translation. However, the pressure sensor can pick up any small pressure changes as little as 5 gram force from the underside of the foot. We can even record people’s foot pressure, playback, and jump to see the pressure heatmap at a specific time.

The other project we showed was VR rehabilitation, which is the same one I introduced in my last blog. We showed two of the major scenes: subway and airport. We were glad that people at the expo loved to try our VR demos since they are mostly in the field of insurance and they particularly care about fall prevention.

I have been working on the two projects for a few years, but still, I felt that I have not built up my deep thinking on the improvement of life quality. The fascinating talks and cool demos from other groups inspired me to think about new applications that we can use our technology to unload even a little burden from the people who are suffering from dysfunctions.