Fully-automated "timed up and go" and "30-second chair stand" tests assessment: A low cost approach based on Arduino and LabVIEW

In this paper it is described the prototyping of an instrumented chair that allows to fully-automate the "Timed Up and Go" and "30-Second Chair Stand" tests assessment. The presented functional chair prototype is a low cost approach that uses inexpensive sensors and the Arduino platform as the data acquisition board, with its software developed resorting to LabVIEW. The "Timed up and go test" consists in measuring the time spent in the task execution of standing up from a chair, walk three meters with a maximum speed without running, turn a cone and going back to the initial position. The "30-Second Chair Stand" test consists in the count of the number of completed chair stands in 30 seconds. It are agility and strength tests easy to setup and execute although they lack of repeatability, whenever the measures are taken manually, due to the rough errors that are introduced. © 2015 Springer International Publishing.