Development of a Sensor Module for Estimating the Center of Pressure in Low Cost Gait Rehabilitation Robots

Abstract

Gait information of pedestrians is an important factor in gait rehabilitation. The most important factor is to measure the center of pressure (CoP) compared to other measurements because gait patterns are varied according to CoP. Multiple strain gauges, multi-axis load cells, and pneumatic tube sensors have been used to measure the CoP of the body. Because these sensors are large sizes and high prices, these sensors are not suitable for low cost gait rehabilitation robots. Thus, in this study a sensor module that can estimate the CoP of the body roughly is proposed. The proposed sensor module uses resistance variable sensors, which are able to detect positions. For applying the proposed sensor, an extra device is proposed and is combined with sensors for configuring a module. A comparison test is implemented using a pressure sensor with an FSR array structure in order to verify the proposed method. In results, the proposed method represents an agreement in directivity more than 93%.