Smart jumpsuit tracks infant motor skills at home
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Researchers at the University of Helsinki and HUS Helsinki University Hospital in Finland developed a smart jumpsuit, called MAIJU, to track the motor development of infants in their homes.
The team studied 92 typically developing babies between 4 and 19 months old, collecting 580 measurements and over 1,227 hours of data as the children played. The jumpsuit uses four movement sensors to record a child’s postures and movements, and a deep-learning model analyzes this data to create detailed motor metrics.
Previously, doctors and parents assessed infant motor skills subjectively, relying on observation or reports. The new system provides objective, quantitative data, creating functional growth charts alongside traditional anatomical measurements like height and weight. Researchers identified 220 different motor metrics and created a normative growth chart for each one. The team then tested these charts on 39 children receiving neurological developmental follow-up, discovering that 121 of the motor metrics differed significantly in infants with abnormal neurological development.
They also found that motor skill development is largely a gradual process, rather than occurring in distinct leaps as some traditional assessments suggest, and that it is closely linked to cognitive, communicative, and social development. The researchers are now comparing data collected in Finland to data gathered in Malawi, hoping to establish a globally comparable standard for assessing infant neurological development. The MAIJU system remains a research tool and is not yet available for clinical use.
