Smart Insole: A Wearable Sensor Device for Unobtrusive Gait Monitoring in Daily Life

Gait analysis is an important medical diagnostic process and has many applications in healthcare, rehabilitation, therapy, and exercise training. However, typical gait analysis has to be performed in a gait laboratory, which is inaccessible for a large population and cannot provide natural gait meas...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on industrial informatics 2016-12, Vol.12 (6), p.2281-2291
Main Authors: Feng Lin, Aosen Wang, Yan Zhuang, Tomita, Machiko R., Wenyao Xu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accelerometers
Bluetooth
Feature extraction
Gait
Gait analysis
Gait recognition
Halls
Health care
inertial measurement unit (IMU)
Inertial platforms
Insoles
Legged locomotion
Monitoring
Physical training
Plantar pressure
Pressure sensors
Rehabilitation
Sensor arrays
Sensors
Smart Insole
Smartphones
Telemedicine
Three axis
Walking
wearable devices
Wireless communication
Wireless sensor networks
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Summary:Gait analysis is an important medical diagnostic process and has many applications in healthcare, rehabilitation, therapy, and exercise training. However, typical gait analysis has to be performed in a gait laboratory, which is inaccessible for a large population and cannot provide natural gait measures. In this paper, we present a novel sensor device, namely, Smart Insole, to tackle the challenge of efficient gait monitoring in real life. An array of electronic textile (eTextile)-based pressure sensors are integrated in the insole to fully measure the plantar pressure. Smart Insole is also equipped with a low-cost inertial measurement unit including a three-axis accelerometer, a three-axis gyroscope, and a three-axis magnetometer to capture the gait characteristics in motion. Smart Insole can offer precise acquisition of gait information. Meanwhile, it is lightweight, thin, and comfortable to wear, providing an unobtrusive way to perform the gait monitoring. Furthermore, a smartphone graphic user interface is developed to display the sensor data in real-time via Bluetooth low energy. We perform a set of experiments in four real-life scenes including hallway walking, ascending/descending stairs, and slope walking, where gait parameters and features are extracted. Finally, the limitation and improvement, wearability and usability, further work, and healthcare-related potential applications are discussed.
ISSN:1551-3203
1941-0050
DOI:10.1109/TII.2016.2585643