Forget Mood Rings, What Does Your Walk Say About How You Feel?


Potsdam, NY, March 31, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Can you tell how energetic or fatigued a person is, just by looking at how they walk? That’s what Ali Boolani, Associate Professor of Physical Therapy in the Lewis School of Health Sciences at Clarkson University, and Shafique Chaudhry, Assistant Professor in the David Reh School of Business and their team wanted to know.

They asked 126 participants to self-report their current moods and then had them walk around a 6-meter track in Boolani’s lab wearing seven sensors on their bodies. Then, using the data from the sensors and using machine learning they accurately identified how energetic (88.4% accuracy) and fatigued (88.6% accuracy) the participants felt. 

“Based on this preliminary work, we can identify feelings of energy and fatigue on a spectrum (whether someone is low or high energy). This is very exciting work because what our current models find is in line with our previous work that people who are low energy walk as if they’re at a higher risk for trips or falls, while people who are low fatigue just slow down and walk more carefully,” Boolani said.

Boolani and Masudul Imtiaz, an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clarkson are now working to develop their own sensors to identify feelings of energy and fatigue in people. 

Boolani, Chaudhry and post-doctoral fellows in Boolani’s lab are also currently collecting walking gait data in people to see if they can create machine learning models to identify the intensity of changes in feelings of energy and fatigue over the course of a 30-minute walk.

To read more about the study, click here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/12/6/3083

As a private, national research university, Clarkson is a leader in technological education and sustainable economic development through teaching, scholarship, research and innovation. We ignite personal connections across academic fields and industries to create the entrepreneurial mindset, knowledge and intellectual curiosity needed to innovate world-relevant solutions and cultivate the leaders of tomorrow. With its main campus located in Potsdam, N.Y., and additional graduate program and research facilities in the New York Capital Region, Beacon, N.Y., and New York City, Clarkson educates 4,800 students across 90+ rigorous programs of study in engineering, business, the arts, education, sciences and health professions. Our alumni earn salaries that are among the top 2% in the nation and realize accelerated career growth. One in five already leads as a CEO, senior executive or owner of a company.

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