A low cost measurement system to extract kinematic parameters from walker devices

Abstract

This paper presents a low cost measurement system that can be used to extract kinematic parameters from walker devices. The proposed measurement system can be easily integrated in any commercial non-smart walker device and includes mainly a set of six force sensing resistors and one 3D accelerometer, with the associated signal conditioning circuits, and the data acquisition and processing unit with wireless communication capabilities. The signals that are acquired from the sensors are used to obtain, in real time, the values of several variables related with strength, acceleration and tilt angles that are associated with the usage of walker devices. The proposed measurement system enables the detection of conditions that are related with a deficient usage of the walker device, such as, bad positioning of the walker legs during gait, amplitude and timing unbalances of the forces applied on the walker legs or on the walker hand grips, excessive values of mechanical oscillations or tilt angles of the walker device. Some calibration and experimental results are included in the paper.