Menu
Our socials

    Innovator in the Spotlight

    Towards a more inclusive society to raise awareness of basic skills gaps

    In the Netherlands, 2.5 million people struggle daily with reading, writing, math, and digital skills, also called basic skills. These deficiencies make it difficult for them to fully participate in society, such as reading and understanding a letter or buying a train ticket, leading to various personal and societal problems.

    More info

    POWEr FITTing – Real time non-contact posture monitoring

    Lines

    TNO internship – A multidisciplinary project to develop a real time algorithm to detect, classify and monitor the posture of an office worker using pressure sensors.

    Project description

    The aim of this student project is to create an algorithm to monitor the posture of a sitting person in an office environment in real time. This is done in an unobtrusive manner via the usage of flexible pressure sensors on the chair surface. The first step in this research would be to create more insight in sitting postures, to understand which different postures are important to be recognized. Secondly data gather experiments are done to create a dataset of data using both the pressure mats as well as a reference sensor. When the data is obtained an algorithm needs to be created which would be able to detect a person, classify which posture this person currently has and monitor changes over time. This probably needs to be done using a supervised machine learned algorithm in python. It is important that correlations can be found between the outcome of the algorithm and its biomedical meaning, as well as the importance of sensor placement locations.

    Your background

    You are an ambitious master student with both scientific and practical skills looking for an internship or master thesis of at least 6-9 months. You have a biomedical science or applied science background, with knowledge in the fields of data acquisition, biomedical signal analysis and programming (preferably in the field of machine learning). You are pro-active and independent, and a good team player. Good communication skills in English is expected. You will be part of a motivating and enthusiastic team on non-contact sensing.

    Your Tasks

    • Background/literature research on posture of an office worker in a chair
    • Creating and performing measurement for data gathering
    • Creation of real time algorithm to analyze pressure data in python
    • Testing/evaluating created algorithms in terms of performance
    • Evaluate the outcome to give feedback on sensor placements
    • Participate in group meetings, provide feed-back, discuss results, and propose solutions to various challenging aspects
    • Write technical internship reports

    What can you expect of your work situation?

    TNO is an independent research organization whose expertise and research make an important contribution to the competitiveness of companies and organizations, to the economy and to the quality of society as a whole. Innovation with purpose is what TNO stands for. With 3000 people we develop knowledge not for its own sake but for practical application. To create new products that make life more pleasant and valuable and help companies innovate. To find creative answers to the questions posed by society. We work for a variety of customers: governments, the SME sector, large companies, service providers and non-governmental organizations. Working together on new knowledge, better products and clear recommendations for policy and processes. In everything we do, impact is the key. Our product and process innovations and recommendations are only worth something if our customers can use them to boost their competitiveness.

    What can TNO offer you?

    You want to work on the precursor of your career; a work placement gives you an opportunity to take a good look at your prospective future employer. TNO goes a step further. It’s not just looking that interests us; you and your knowledge are essential to our innovation. That’s why we attach a great deal of value to your personal and professional development. You will, of course, be properly supervised during your work placement and be given the scope for you to get the best out of yourself. Naturally, we provide suitable work placement compensation.

    Types of student project possible

    TU/e: Master internship, Master thesis

    Types of study

    • Biomedical science
    • Applied science

    Starting date/duration of student projects

    Flexible depending on the requirements of students’ institutions.

    Contact

    Lars Rikken, lars.rikken@tno.nl

    Responsible project

    POWEr FITTing

    POWEr FITTing optimizes the relationship between vitality and the (home) office environment through the combination of data acquisition, integration and application for the validation and acceleration of user-oriented solutions.
    Read more