Abstract
<p class="Abstract">Walker assistive devices play an important role in extending the autonomy of elderly people and in recovering the mobility of people affected by locomotion disabilities. The next generation of walkers are hoped to include embedded sensors and data processing capabilities that will allow for the extraction of objective metrics (about gait and body posture) to assist the work of physiotherapists and to enable the self-control nature of walker usage. The paper presents the <em>Andante</em>, our latest proposal of a smart walker intended to monitor and analyze gait in real time. The system makes use of e-textile electrodes to sense the heart rate of the user, load cells to measure the forces applied on the walker legs, and an inertial measurement unit to sense motion and orientation. These signals are sampled locally and transferred over a Bluetooth link to a remote host, where they are processed in real time. Data processing includes the detection, classification, and characterization of the steps. A rich set of parameters is presented for each step, including estimates of balance and motor coordination, step length and azimuth, and lift of the walker frame. This information can be used by physiotherapist to objectively assess the physical condition of the user and tune rehabilitation therapy if needed. The proposed solution can be easily integrated into any commercial walker without any loss of functionality.</p>
Highlights
Assistive walking devices play an important role in extending the autonomy of elderly people and in preventing accidental falls
The four walker legs were placed over four digital scales, model Spider 1S-60S from Mettler Toledo, and load was applied on the walker frame to move the centre of forces (COF) to the 2nd quadrant
The COF coordinates were computed knowing the geometry of the walker, and the weights were indicated by the scales
Summary
Assistive walking devices play an important role in extending the autonomy of elderly people and in preventing accidental falls. The decisions of the physiotherapist could be improved if they were based on objective metrics obtained from sensed data To address these problems, several instrumented walkers have been proposed to monitor and analyze gait [9,10]. Kinematic parameters related with human gait are often measured using accelerometers or inertial motion units (IMUs) attached to the walker frame In this case, long-term drifts and persistent DC components must be filtered out so as not to affect the time integration of the signals [16]. We present the Andante, our latest proposal for a smart walker and the evolution of the prototype presented in [25] It includes e-textile electrodes for capturing the heart rate of the user, load cells to measure the forces applied on the walker legs, an IMU to sense motion and orientation, and software to bind all the above together. Where FT represents the total force applied on the walker legs, and FU represents the user weight
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