A New Deliberation of Embedded based Assistive
System for Yoga
Chinnaiah M C, Kausalya Nandan T P, Haritha P, Sanjay Dubey & I.A.Pasha
Department of ECE, B V Raju Institute of Technology,
Narsapur, Medak, Telangana, India
chinnaaiah.mc@bvrit.ac.in
Abstract— This paper presents a design of Embedded based
Assistive System for Yoga (EASY) and its implementation for
the yoga postures analysis. Yoga is a proven solution for the
human physical and mind activities. The human posture
analysis or gesture analysis in noninvasive methods are highly
appreciable solutions. In this regard, the proposed newly
designed EASY is integrated with image processing techniques.
The node points are marked on human anatomy as per skeleton
joints virtual method. An image based skeleton approach
algorithm has been developed to analyze the Yoga postures like
Parsva Tadasana. The Embedded based Assistive System for
Yoga is embodied using Kinect sensor and LabVIEW. The
experimental results of EASY have been published for real time
subjects (human).
Keywords— Yoga, Embedded design, Image processing,
LabVIEW
I. INTRODUCTION
Today human life habituated to medication for every
reasons. These medicines completely transmitted throughout
the body giving a relief from pain. Instead, these medication
impact human body with many side effects which could be
psychological and / or physical. With regular use of these
medicines, a person goes under effects viz. concentration
levels, memory loss, learning efficiency, self-confidence,
physical strength, immunity and flexibility. Hence, a best
solution for improving these losses accomplished through
practicing of Yoga Asanas. Practicing yoga asanas will help
a person to decrease the depression, improve muscular
flexibility and strength, immunity, organized respiration and
energy level. These yoga asanas can be a best solution for
controlling asthma, vision, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis,
body pains etc [1].
Practice of Yoga asana improves the human physical
body and mind as well leads to healthy subject. Each yoga
asana has a particular procedure and is associated with
dedicated benefits. But an individual cannot perform yoga
without the proper guidance from a yoga guru or trainer.
Unguided practice causes harm to muscles and ligaments. In
this competitive and busy world, not every individual may
afford time to visit a yoga institute or take training under an
experienced yoga teacher. Hence, there is a requirement and
necessity of an assistive device that helps the user to practice
these asanas for individual benefit. Many researchers have
developed yoga assistive devices and self training procedures
using different technologies like Image Processing,
wearables and posture replication[2]-[5]. However, proper
analysis of body postures and guidance to the end user is the
major issue to be addressed.
This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and
Technology, under the India, Department of Science &
Technology. Grant file number SR/SATYAM/469/2016 of the
project “Design and Development of an Embedded Assistive
Yoga System”
In this paper, the proposed 'EASY' provides the solution
for posture correction of individual subject with image
processing techniques, by this posture rectification has been
performed. Here Kinect sensors have been used for capturing
the depth image of the asana. It is then processed and
analyzed in a virtual environment using LabVIEW, and then
matched with asanas from the database for percentage of
accuracy and the practitioner guided accordingly.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
explains in detail the related work. Section III gives the
proposed approach; block diagram of the system is explained
in section IV. The results of the processed images are
validated in the section V.
II. RELATED WORK
Yoga practice can cure depression, anxiety, sleeplessness
and many other physical health issues. Because of the
immense benefits of yoga there is a thirst for self-training
system. Hua-Tsung Chen et.al [2], proposed a Yoga self-
training system for performing the yoga posture correctly and
prevent from injury caused by improper postures. This is
paper not covered about the subject training under Yoga
trainer. Patil et. al [3] in their work on “Yoga tutor” carried
out with Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) to identify and
visualize the performance of asana posture among the
practitioner and the trainer. Whereas, only the contour
information obtained from one particular-direction cannot
describe and differentiate the asana performance
appropriately. Luo et al. [4] in their work proposed a Yoga
training system on the basis of motion replication technique
(MoRep). The designed Interface Suit, consisting of Inertial
Measurement Units (IMUs) and tactors, captures body
motions, but it does influence the practitioner’s exercising.
W. Wu et. al [5] proposed a yoga expert system, which
instructs training technique based on images and text.
However, the practitioner’s posture is not analyzed and the
instructions should be followed on time.
In this paper, we have proposed an image based skeleton
approach algorithm to analyze the yoga posture, the case
study has been developed for ParsvaTadasana (Side Bending
Mountain Pose). By practicing this posture the practitioner
can have the benefits like improved inward focus, shoulder
and spine flexibility, improves confidence, corrects bowed
legs and knocked knees. The novelty in this proposed system
is the integration of skeleton methods and golden template
techniques to identify the amount of deviation while
performing the asana postures.
III. PROPOSED EMBEDDED BASED ASSISTIVE SYSTEM FOR
YOGA
In the proposed system, first the image is captured using a
Kinect sensor which produces a depth image which has been
explained in Step A. Fig. 1 depicts the block diagram of the
proposed system. The captured image may consist of
different backgrounds and to process the image a constant
background produces accurate outputs. Hence, these depth
images are processed for background subtraction. The
process of background subtraction has been explained in Step
B. From the background subtracted image, edges are detected
using canny edge detection algorithm and this will eliminate
the unwanted edges. The process of edge detection is handled
in Step C. The edge information thus obtained is further
processed using skeletonization algorithms for reducing
foreground regions and this has explained in Step D. In Step
E, from extracted skeleton, asana performed by the
practitioner is recognized using pattern matching techniques.
In Step F, comparison of the asana performed with the
reference asana is carried out to know the accuracy of posture
performance by the practitioner and thus the practitioner will
be provided with visualized instruction for rectification of the
posture if any.
Fig. 1: Block diagram of Embedded based Assistive System for Yoga
A. Capture depth image
The Kinect sensor is used to capture the depth image of the
asana posture as shown in the Fig. 2 which acts as the input
[6]. Depth image represents the distance information, it is
measured based on Time of Frame (TOF) and is prebuilt in
the sensor. The researchers realizing the potential and
capabilities of this sensor utilized it for depth sensing image
capturing [13]. In our proposed method, the depth image
obtained from the Kinect sensor with the frame size of 640 x
480 dimension. The TOF of proposed EASY is 30
frames/second.
B. Background Subtraction
Background Subtraction is used in the fields of image
processing and computer vision wherein an image's
foreground is extracted for further processing. To serve this
purpose K-means clustering, an unsupervised machine
learning algorithm is used which aims at partitioning ‘n’
observations into ‘k’ clusters. The k-means algorithm
concentrates on partitioning the particles in an image into
different clusters and obtains the distances between particles
in the same cluster closer than the distances between particles
in other clusters. So if a particular threshold is chosen such
that the center point defines a group of similar objects, then
the threshold for the dissimilar particles can be estimated with
the distribution of data [11].
Fig. 2: Depth image from Kinect sensor
In the proposed method, the background subtraction is
carried out in the LabVIEW environment using K-means vi,
where vi refers to .vi extension files in LabVIEW.
This vi takes the depth image as input and corrects the
background to be uniform so that further processing can be
efficiently handled. The background subtracted image is
shown in Fig. 3
Fig. 3: Background Subtracted Image
C. Edge Detection
Edges are the local changes in an image that are important
features for image analysis. In the proposed system, Canny
edge detection method [12] is used as it incorporates steps to
eliminate unwanted edges and results in more accurate edge
detection results as shown in Fig. 4 The steps for detecting
edges using Canny Edge Detection Method is as follows:
Step 1: Smooth the image with a Gaussian filter: Let
P[i,j] denote the image. Convolving this image with a
Gaussian smoothing filter using separable filtering results an
array of smoothed data as shown in equation 1,
F[i, j]=G[i, j;σ]*P[i, j] (1)
where σ is the spread of the Gaussian that controls the
degree of smoothing.
Step 2: Compute the gradient magnitude and orientation
using finite-difference approximations for the partial
derivatives:
Computing the gradient of the smoothed array F[i, j] using
the 2 x 2 finite-difference approximation process produces
two arrays M[i,j]and N[i,j] for the x and y partial derivatives
along x and y axis respectively. For these gradient
calculations, Sobel operator is used. The magnitude and
rotation angle of the gradient can be computed from the
standard formulas for rectangular-to-polar conversion as
given in equation 2 and 3 [12].
R[i, j] = √M[i, j]2 + N[i, j]2 (2)
 θ[i, j] = arctan(N[i, j],M[i, j])
Step 3: Apply non-maxima suppression to the gradient
magnitude:
Larger values of the magnitude image array R[i, j] imply that
the image gradient is large, but is not sufficient to identify the
edges, since identifying the locations in the image array with
rapid change has now been transformed into the identifying
the locations in the magnitude array R[i, j] which will be
local maxima. To identify edges, the broad ridges in the
magnitude array must be thinned so that only the magnitudes
at the points of maximum local change can be identified. This
process is called non-maxima suppression, which in this case
results in thinned edges.
d(p, q) = √(px − qx )2 + (py − qy )2 (6)
This transforms the image with the pixel value at a coordinate
being set as the distance to the nearest zero intensity point. It
computes the medial axis transformation for skeletonization
[8].
Skeleton information as demonstrated in Fig.5 is extracted
from the contour data (edge detected information) for further
more reduction of the information. This step reduces the time
required and data required to be processed. Here, we get the
information of position of the body joints- they are, neck,
shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, ankle and foot.
Fig. 5: Skeleton extraction from edge detected image using LabVIEW

Step 4: Detection and linking edges by the double

thresholding algorithm:
The double thresholding links the edges with two thresholds
low threshold (LT) and high threshold (HT) in to edges.
When it reaches the end of a contour, the algorithm looks in
LT at the locations of the 8-neighbors for edges that can be
linked to the contour. The algorithm continues to gather
edges from LT until the gap has been bridged to an edge in
HT. The algorithm performs edge linking as a by-product of
thresholding [7].
E. Pseudo code for Asana Recognition
The practitioner has to follow the instructions given while
performing the asana. Let the image obtained after
Skeletonization be Is Here the correlation between the
practitioner’s posture, Is and the reference posture, R will be
taken into consideration for observing the amount of match.
For this process Gray scale value pyramid pattern matching
algorithm is said to be implemented.
begin
C = Is⊗ R
If (C ≥ T) go to step E
else repeat step D
Fig. 4: Edge Detection using canny edge detection for different values end

TABLE II. NOTATIONS FOR ASANA RECOGNITION AND

The Table.1, gives the comparison of edge detection for RECTIFICATION
different values of high and low thresholds and standard
deviation. It is obvious from the above table that when high Symbol Description
threshold value is approximately twice that of the low Is Skeleton Image
threshold value with minimum standard deviation, the R Reference Image
accuracy of the edge obtained is relatively high. C Similarity Measure
T Threshold
TABLE I. EDGE DETECTION FOR DIFFERENT HT, LT
AND SD VALUES V_I Visual Instruction
Standard High Low Accuracy %
deviation(σ) Threshold(HT) Threshold(LT) F. Pseudo code for Asana Recognition
1 0.7 0.1 43.1 begin
1 0.95 0.2 62.45
1 0.96 0.2 62.98 if(Is == R) Goto Step A
1 0.95 0.8 79.23
2 0.95 0.5 83.3 else Follow V_I
1 0.99 0.5 89.67 end
D. Skeletonization
IV. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The distance transform on a binary image [8] is defined as:
In this system, the asana performed by the practitioner is
DT(p) = min{d(p,q)|I(q)=0} (5) captured using Kinect sensor in front, back and side views.
Position of the sensors perpendicular to each other and are
where, I is the image, d(p,q) is the Euclidean distance.
located at a distance of more than 200 cm away from the
practitioner to capture the body maps. Depth image from the
Kinect sensor undergoes image processing in the control unit
to reduce the obtained information. Control unit processes the
input image and gives the posture matching information in
terms of score. The database has been created with 10 images
by considering two different postures firstly Parsva Tadasana
and secondly. Virabhadrasana. The practitioner performing
the asana will be compared as frame to frame from the data
base images and will be directed with corrections at every
stage of the posture as represented in Fig 6.

Fig. 8: skeleton image of parsva tadasana

C. Result of Asana Recognition

Here in the below Fig. 9 and Fig. 10 processed skeleton

image is matched with the reference image using LabVIEW
environment to get measure of match.

Fig. 6: Experimental set up for recording the images using Kinect

Sensor.

V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The proposed work carried out for two asanas as Parsva
Tadaasana and Veerabhadra Asana II (Warrior Pose II). The
results thus obtained while performing the asanas are as
illustrated in the following images.
A. Result of Edge Detection
The result presented below defines the edge detection
process for Parsva Tadasana from the depth image captured
Fig. 9: Asana Recognition of input skeleton asana with reference for Parsva
using the Kinect sensor. The edge detection process is
Tadaasana
implemented using Canny edge detection technique in
LabVIEW environment as displayed in the Fig. 7. Here
contour of the depth image is extracted to lessen the amount In the TABLE III, X and Y denote the centroid of the human
of information to process. body, A denotes the angle of deviation and S denotes the
score obtained while performing the asana. The score of 1000
indicate that the asana performed is perfect such that angle of
deviation is 0 and the practitioner can move to the next step

Fig. 7: LabVIEW front panel and block diagram for Edge detection of
Parsva Tadasana

B. Result of Skeletonization
After extracting edge, information is still reduced to
skeleton using LabVIEW environment and is explained in
Fig. 8.
of the asana, as the score reduces the angle of deviation is
more. Hence, greater the score, greater is the perfection in the
posture performed. If the input matches with any of the
reference asanas then the match score is displayed which
indicates the extent of similarity.

Fig. 10: Asana Recognition of input skeleton asana with

reference for Virabhadrasana (Warrior Pose- II)
D. Result of Asana Comparison
The asana recognized is compared with the data base
images. The comparison process results as the level of
accuracy as is shown in the Fig. 11 and Fig. 12. In fig 11 the
comparison is as such the asana performed by the practitioner
is exactly same as the input image or the database image and
hence the accuracy is 100%.
Fig. 11: Result of Asana Comparison with perfect alignment
Where as in fig 12 the comparison output is that the asana
performed by the practitioner does not match with the
database image and the area of mismatch indicated on the
screen. Now the practitioner will be instructed through the
voice modules for the correction process and accordingly the
practitioner can improve his accuracy in performing the
asana.
Fig. 12: Result of Asana Comparison with imperfect alignment
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
The proposed work has presented a solution for the
development of Embedded based Assistive System for Yoga.
That analyses human yoga postures are capable of reducing
the image to the maximum level and matching with the
database to know the amount of correctness in the asana.
In the process of real time yoga activity with EASY,
Skeletal data along with Golden Template method is used for
asana correction. The EASY control unit/ algorithm is
deployed using LabVIEW, that provides a platform for
integrating all these processes in a system and provides an
efficient utilization of system memory and aids the
practitioner to improve the performance.
The other assistive yoga systems has developed using
the SURF and MoRep [2] [3]. The experimental validation
done using EASY with few subjects for yoga asanas like
ParsvaTadasanaand Virabhadraasana. This is a new and novel
attempt for assisting traditional yoga asanas with image
processing and embedded system technology intervention.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The Authors extend their gratitude to Department of Science
and Technology, New Delhi, INDIA for funding this work as
part of project entitled "Design & development of an
embedded assistive yoga system" under the Science and
Technology for Yoga and Meditation (SATYAM), (Vide Ref
No: SR/SATYAM/2015, 2015-16). Also, they wish to
acknowledge the Management SriVishnu Raju garu,
Principal of BVRIT Narsapur and student of Dr.
B.K.S.Iyengar, yoga teacher Mr. Nagaraj for their support
and encouragement in all stages of this project work.
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