A Wireless Human Motion Monitoring System Based on Joint Angle Sensors and Smart Shoes Available to Purchase

In this paper, a wireless human motion monitoring system based on joint angle sensors and smart shoes is introduced. An inertial measurement unit (IMU) is employed in a joint angle sensor to estimate the lower-extremity joint rotation in three dimensions. Four pressure sensors are embedded in a smart shoe to measure the distribution of ground contact forces (GCFs). Zig-bee and Bluetooth modules are combined with the joint angle sensors and smart shoes respectively to make the whole system wireless. It is shown that gait phase and step length can be calculated based on the raw sensor data for gait analysis. To provide visual feedback to the users, with the consent of Apple Inc., an user interface application is developed on an iPad. Experimental results are obtained from both a healthy subject and a stroke patient for comparison. Some discussions are made about the potential use of this system in a clinical environment.