A practical gait feedback method based on wearable inertial sensors for a drop foot assistance device

Meng, Lin and Martinez-Hernandez, Uriel and Childs, Craig and Dehghani-Sanij, Abbas A. and Buis, Adrjan (2019) A practical gait feedback method based on wearable inertial sensors for a drop foot assistance device. IEEE Sensors Journal, 19 (24). pp. 12235-12243. ISSN 1530-437X (https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2019.2938764)

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Abstract

To maximise the efficiency of gait interventions, gait phase and joint kinematics are important for closing the system loop of adaptive robotic control. However, few studies have applied an inertial sensor system including both gait phase detection and joint kinematic measurement. Many algorithms for joint measurement require careful alignment of the inertial measurement unit (IMU) to the body segment. In this paper, we propose a practical gait feedback method, which provides sufficient feedback without requiring precise alignment of the IMUs. The method incorporates a two-layer model to realise simultaneous gait stance and swing phase detection and ankle joint angle measurement. Recognition of gait phases is performed by a high-level probabilistic method using angular rate from the sensor attached to the shank while the ankle angle is calculated using a data fusion algorithm based on the complementary filter and sensor-to-segment calibration. The online performance of the algorithm was experimentally validated when 10 able-bodied participants walked on the treadmill with three different speeds. The outputs were compared to the ones measured by an optical motion analysis system. The results showed that the IMU-based algorithm achieved a good accuracy of the gait phase recognition (above 95%) with a short delay response below 20 ms and accurate angle measurements with root mean square errors below 3.5º compared to the optical reference. It demonstrates that our method can be used to provide gait feedback for the correction of drop foot.

ORCID iDs

Meng, Lin, Martinez-Hernandez, Uriel, Childs, Craig ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1318-0007, Dehghani-Sanij, Abbas A. and Buis, Adrjan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3947-293X;
  • Item type:Article
    ID code:69886
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    15 December 2019
    Published
    2 September 2019
    Published Online
    29 August 2019
    Accepted
    Notes:© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
    Subjects:Technology > Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) > Bioengineering
    Department:Faculty of Engineering > Biomedical Engineering
    Strategic Research Themes > Health and Wellbeing
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:20 Sep 2019 13:58
    Last modified:11 Nov 2024 12:26
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/69886
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