Wireless gait event detection system based on single gyroscope.

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study is developing an inertial sensor module system to measure gait event timings and analyzing the accuracy of calculated gait event timings by comparing synchronized 3D motion data. This system uses a single gyroscope module, attached at the heel, to collect gait event timings of heel strike, foot flat, heel off and toe off through automatic event detection algorithm. The algorithm is built to detect gait event timings through processing of pre-defined pitch data points from gyroscope. The 3-D motion capture system is synchronized to compare the accuracy between different gait event timings. In the experiment, six participants, one person at a time, walk at the three different paces of slow, normal, and fast; each participant performs 5 times of the experiment. The result shows that the absolute error is considerably small since the worst-case error is 37.4ms regardless of the different walking speeds. Therefore, this system can be implemented for the purpose of collecting more accurate and detailed gait event timings. Although this system is small, light, long-lasting and accurate, it is necessary for improvement on collecting other gait information such as walking speed and spatial variables.