MoveX

Motivation: People living with diabetes and obesity, especially those who find traditional exercise routines too intense, costly, or unmotivating. The project aims to engage these individuals through low-impact, movement-based gaming that integrates physical activity into entertainment, promoting better health management and motivation

Design:

MoveX reimagines physical activity by integrating wearable motion sensors (IMUs) and ultrasonic hand sensors with Minecraft, creating a matless “dancing interface.”

  • Core concept: Replace sedentary keyboard inputs with physical body movements.

  • Hardware setup: Two Seeed Studio Xiao nRF52840 IMUs detect leg motion (forward, backward, left, right), while two HC-SR04 ultrasound sensors detect hand gestures (jump and interact).

  • Software design: Sensor data are trained per user to classify movement directions. The system converts physical motions into real-time game commands.

Results:

Directional movements (IMU-based):

  • Back: 78% accuracy

  • Forward: 74%

  • Right: 82%

  • Left: 79%

    Gestural actions (ultrasound-based):

  • Jump: 100% accuracy

  • Interact: 100% accuracy

Team：Chang (Holly) Liu, Laura Xing, Weixi Deng.

Principles of Biomedical Instrumentation Mid-term Project

🌙 Personal Reflection

This project taught me that progress often hides behind failure. We faced unexpected challenges as the IMU sensors we ordered arrived after the competition, forcing us to use replacements, and one even had its gyroscope and accelerometer reversed in the Arduino setup. Each time we got one motion to work, we paused to celebrate, not realizing how hard it would be to integrate all six sensors later. On the final night our system failed under I²C conflicts and data overload, and we had to rebuild it piece by piece.

We stayed up through the night in the design studio, my first and only all-nighter at Johns Hopkins, debugging, recalibrating, and testing until sunrise. The final version was not perfect, but it worked, and it was ours. That night taught me that success does not come from avoiding failure but from learning through it patiently, persistently, and with a team that never gave up.

First and only all-nighter at Johns Hopkins

2024-11-01