A Wireless Human Motion Monitoring System for Smart Rehabilitation

In this paper, a wireless human motion monitoring system is presented for gait analysis and visual feedback in rehabilitation training. The system consists of several inertial sensors and a pair of smart shoes with pressure sensors. The inertial sensors can capture lower-extremity joint rotations in three dimensions and the smart shoes can measure the force distributions on the two feet during walking. Based on the raw measurement data, gait phases, step lengths, and center of pressure (CoP) are calculated to evaluate the abnormal walking behaviors. User interfaces are developed on both laptops and mobile devices to provide visual feedback to patients and physical therapists. The system has been tested on healthy subjects and then applied in a clinical study with 24 patients. It has been verified that the patients are able to understand the intuitive visual feedback from the system, and similar training performance has been achieved compared to the traditional gait training with physical therapists. The experimental results with one healthy subject, one stroke patient, and one Parkinson's disease patient are compared to demonstrate the performance of the system.