Electrical signal recording on leg muscle for footwear ergonomic analysis

Abstract

Pain on muscle, bone and joint often become a problem related to footwear users. The muscles and bones of the feet, especially the sole part, have complex and unique shapes. The biomechanical forces that occured when we run or walk involving many muscles. Available footwear products such as slippers or shoes were designed to support all movements with minimal force applied to these muscles. Therefore, designing appropriate footwear should be ideally done by measuring its impact on involved muscles work. In this study, we designed an electrical signal recording of leg muscle activity for ergonomic analysis of footwear by using muscle sensor MyoWare, Arduino, and interface display. The measurements included the electric activity using 3 types of footwears: none, slippers and sports shoe with 2 different scenarios: walk and run. As a result, the recording system can show different muscle contraction in those different conditions. In both activities walking and running, it was found that without footwear, there was higher muscle contraction compared to using slippers and shoes with the highest contraction reaches 85.7% when running. This method can support the ergonomic analysis of footwear designed by the factory and may also contribute to sports engineering.