A Preliminary Test of Measurement of Joint Angles and Stride Length with Wireless Inertial Sensors for Wearable Gait Evaluation System

The purpose of this study is to develop wearable sensor system for gait evaluation using gyroscopes and accelerometers for application to rehabilitation, healthcare and so on. In this paper, simultaneous measurement of joint angles of lower limbs and stride length was tested with a prototype of wearable sensor system. The system measured the joint angles using the Kalman filter. Signals from the sensor attached on the foot were used in the stride length estimation detecting foot movement automatically. Joint angles of the lower limbs were measured with stable and reasonable accuracy compared to those values measured with optical motion measurement system with healthy subjects. It was expected that the stride length measurement with the wearable sensor system would be practical by realizing more stable measurement accuracy. Sensor attachment position was suggested not to affect significantly measurement of slow and normal speed movements in a test with the rigid body model. Joint angle patterns measured in 10 m walking with a healthy subject were similar to common patterns. High correlation between joint angles at some characteristic points and stride velocity were also found adequately. These results suggested that the wireless wearable inertial sensor system could detect characteristics of gait.