How you sleep is how you walk

Chinese researchers said people’s manner of walking, or gait, can help monitor their sleep quality with the aid of machine learning models, according to a study recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.

People spend almost one-third of their lives sleeping. In order to improve sleep quality, one needs to know the exact condition of that sleep.

People’s gaits convey unique personal traits including mental and physical health. It has been confirmed in previous studies that the way people walk, such as pace, can indicate the length and quality of their sleep.

Compared with existing sleep monitoring methods like smart bracelets, polysomnography and questionnaires, gait analysis is accurate, noninvasive, low-cost and easy to use.

Aided by Kinect, a line of motion-sensing input devices, the research team with the Institute of Psychology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences collected sleep quality scores and gait data from 56 participants and analyzed the connection between the two, concluding gait can reveal sleep quality quite well.