Project · Bip-Bip
Bip-Bip: a wearable smart system to prevent freezing of gait in people affected by Parkinson’s disease.
A Veneto FSE research project on wearable sensing and machine-learning support for anticipating freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease, with the goal of triggering assistance before or during a freezing episode.
Period2018 – 2019StatusCompletedFundingPOR FSE Veneto 2014–2020 · Innovatori in azienda — Assegni di ricerca 2018 · Regione del Veneto · grant 1695-23-11-2018
Objective
Bip-Bip addressed freezing of gait (FoG), a disabling motor symptom of Parkinson’s disease in which a person can become temporarily unable to initiate or continue walking. The project explored a wearable smart system capable of recognising conditions associated with an imminent freezing episode and providing timely assistance, with the broader aim of reducing the impact of FoG on mobility, autonomy and quality of life.
The official Veneto Region funding record identifies the project as 1695-23-11-2018, submitted by the University of Verona under the POR FSE 2014–2020 programme La ricerca a sostegno della trasformazione aziendale — Innovatori in azienda — Assegni di ricerca 2018.
Wearable sensing and prediction
The research line combined on-body sensing with lightweight machine-learning methods suitable for resource-constrained devices. Work by the Verona team during this period studied tri-axial accelerometer signals collected from the back, hip and ankle and the classification of gait into normal, freezing and pre-freezing conditions. The important shift was from detecting a FoG episode after it had started to recognising a precursor state early enough for an assistive device to react.
A peer-reviewed study from the team reported a k-nearest-neighbour classifier over features extracted from accelerometer windows and demonstrated the feasibility of pre-FoG recognition on constrained hardware. That result describes the technical research context in which Bip-Bip was developed; the site does not claim a publication-to-project link unless it is explicitly established in the curated bibliography.
Project record
Public University of Verona material identifies Graziano Pravadelli as project lead and records research activity by Enrico Fraccaroli during the project period. The former CISD site recorded Florenc Demrozi as referent and classified Bip-Bip under Internet of Things 4 Care.
A public project-activity record gives the period as October 2018 to September 2019. Because the content model stores day-precision dates, those month-level values are represented internally by the first and last day of the stated months; no additional project milestone is implied.