Abstract
Human motion analysis is crucial for a wide range of applications and disciplines. The development and validation of low cost and unobtrusive sensing systems for ambulatory motion detection is still an open issue. Inertial measurement systems and e-textile sensors are emerging as potential technologies for daily life situations. We developed and conducted a preliminary evaluation of an innovative sensing concept that combines e-textiles and tri-axial accelerometers for ambulatory human motion analysis. Our sensory fusion method is based on a Kalman filter technique and combines the outputs of textile electrogoniometers and accelerometers without making any assumptions regarding the initial accelerometer position and orientation. We used our technique to measure the flexion-extension angle of the knee in different motion tasks (monopodalic flexions and walking at different velocities). The estimation technique was benchmarked against a commercial measurement system based on inertial measurement units and performed reliably for all of the various tasks (mean and standard deviation of the root mean square error of and , respectively). In addition, the method showed a notable improvement in angular estimation compared to the estimation derived by the textile goniometer and accelerometer considered separately. In future work, we will extend this method to more complex and multi-degree of freedom joints.
Highlights
Human posture and movement analysis is fundamental for a wide range of applications and disciplines, such as physical and neuro-rehabilitation, sports medicine, human performance assessment and virtual training
The resulting knee flexion extension angle was considered as the reference measurement to evaluate the textile goniometer/accelerometer hybrid system that we propose in this work
The knee flexion extension angle estimated by the hybrid system, obtained by fusing goniometer and accelerometer data as described in Section 3, is compared to the output of the reference measurement system
Summary
Human posture and movement analysis is fundamental for a wide range of applications and disciplines, such as physical and neuro-rehabilitation, sports medicine, human performance assessment and virtual training. Standard motion analysis instruments are widely used in these fields, the development and validation of ambulatory and unobtrusive sensing systems, which provide a reliable measurement of human motion and activity in out-of-lab daily life, are still open issues in the current literature. The development and validation of wearable technologies aimed at allowing physicians and therapists to remotely supervise and coach the patients during their rehabilitation exercise in their recovery phase are some of the current challenges. As anticipated by De Rossi and Veltink in [1], wearable textile-integrated sensing of human movements and electrophysiological acquisition devices have been developed. The INTERACTION system was tested in post-stroke patients to assess the quality of their mobility and their reaching and grasping capacities
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