Measurement of human gait using a wearable system with force sensors and inertial sensors

Abstract

Six-axial force sensors and inertial sensors were used together to construct a wireless wearable sensor system for the successive and non-laboratory measurement of gait. The system consists of the wearable sensor shoes and motion sensors. In order to diminish the influence of motion acceleration in the measurements of accelerometers and the disturbance of surrounding magnetic field in the measurements of magnetic sensors, we modified the Extended Kalman Filter to check the values of the acceleration and magnetic field intensity before updating. And a reference system composed of high speed cameras and stationary force plates are used to validate the reliability of the wearable system. The experiment results showed that the wearable system is able to measure the ground reaction force (GRF), joint angles, joint forces and joint moments.