Chinese scientists can tell how well you sleep by watching your step

Artificial intelligence can tell how well people have been sleeping from the way they walk, according to a research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Professor Zhu Tingshao and colleagues at the Institute of Psychology have developed an accurate method of determining sleep quality through its impact on gait, with the help of a machine learning algorithm and a video game component, according to a paper published by online scientific journal PLOS One.

Zhu and his team found upper body parts – such as head and shoulders – betrayed more about a person’s lack of sleep than lower parts like hips and legs. The researchers claim their method could flag the number of people in a crowd who have had insufficient sleep, providing a low cost way for public health authorities to measure the scale of a growing health problem, leading to more timely and effective policies to address the issue.

Poor sleep quality has been linked to everything from bad temper to obesity, work accidents and heart attacks. In China, about a quarter of the population has sleeping difficulties, according to a survey conducted by government hospitals last year. Other countries such as the US have reported similar or worse problems.

The soundness of sleep can be measured by wearing a smart watch or bracelet, donning a brainwave monitor or taking an MRI scan in hospital. These methods, however, require people's collaboration and cannot be used to monitor a population, especially when people are wide-awake.