Inertial sensing in ambulatory back load estimation

Inertial sensing techniques are applied to ambulatory assess back movement in a system for ambulatory estimation of low back load. A combination of a accelerometer and a miniature solid state rate gyroscope was proposed and validated against movement data recorded simultaneously with a 3D video based movement analysis system. The inertial sensing technique appeared to estimate absolute back inclination angle with a typical relative error of /spl plusmn/10%.