Abstract
Wearable sensors may enable the continuous monitoring of gait out of the clinic without requiring supervised tests and costly equipment. This paper investigates the use of a single wearable accelerometer to detect foot contact times and estimate temporal gait parameters (stride time, swing and stance duration). The experiments considered two possible body positions for the accelerometer: over the lower trunk and inside a trouser pocket. The latter approach could be implemented using a common smartphone. Notably, during the experiments, the ground truth was obtained by using a pair of sensorized shoes. Unlike ambient sensors and camera-based systems, sensorized shoes enable the evaluation of body-worn sensors even during longer walks. Experiments showed that both trunk and pocket positions achieved promising results in estimating gait parameters, with a mean absolute error below 50 ms.
Highlights
Spatio-temporal gait parameters can reveal important information related to health and well-being.For instance, some studies have shown that abnormal gait is linked with a higher risk of falling, and gait analysis has been proposed for automated fall-risk assessment [1,2,3]
This article is an extension of the preliminary study we presented at the EAI MobiHealth 2017 conference [20]
As described in the Introduction, we studied the use of a single tri-axial accelerometer worn at two alternative body positions to estimate stride time and stance and swing duration
Summary
Spatio-temporal gait parameters can reveal important information related to health and well-being.For instance, some studies have shown that abnormal gait is linked with a higher risk of falling, and gait analysis has been proposed for automated fall-risk assessment [1,2,3]. Spatio-temporal gait parameters can reveal important information related to health and well-being. It has been demonstrated that some gait parameters are highly sensitive for the identification of the frailty syndrome, which is characterized by reduced strength and motor ability [7,8,9,10]. There has been a significant effort in the development of automated techniques to help clinicians achieve a more objective assessment of gait in a controlled environment. Optoeletronic systems and force platforms represent the state-of-the-art in this field. These techniques typically require a relatively complicated setup, based on costly equipment and/or multiple inertial sensors. Wearable sensor-based systems have been studied as a Sensors 2018, 18, 3811; doi:10.3390/s18113811 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
