Single Gyroscope Sensor Module System for Gait Event Detection

The purpose of this study was to develop the inertial sensor module system to detect gait event using single angular rate sensor(gyroscope), and evaluate the accuracy of this system. This sensor module is attached at the heel and gait events such as heel strike, foot flat, heel off, toe off are detected by using proposed automatic event detection algorithm. The developed algorithm detect characteristics of pitch data of the gyroscope to find gait event. To evaluate the accuracy of system, 3D motion capture system was used and synchronized with sensor module system for comparison of gait event timings. In experiment, 6 subjects performed 5 trials level walking with 3 different conditions such as slow, preferred and fast. Results showed that gait event timings by sensor module system are similar to that by kinematic data, because maximum absolute errors were under 37.4msec regardless of gait velocity. Therefore, this system can be used to detect gait events. Although this system has advantages of small, light weight, long-term monitoring and high accuracy, it is necessary to improve the system to get other gait information such as gait velocity, stride length, step width and joint angles.