Sensor Insoles for Home-Monitoring Applications
While clinical gait analysis covers only a short time window of a patient’s performance in a controlled environment, embedded and wearable sensor systems are able to extend this time window and monitor gait in a more natural and uncontrolled environment during daily living activities. Such gait data can help to give insight into motor fluctuations of e.g. Parkinson´s disease or to estimate the risk of falling of the elderly. However, various challenges have to be address, to unobtrusively integrate such sensing mechanisms into a person’s everyday life:
- Full integration to enable a non-stigmatizing data acquisition
- Non-restrictive and easy to use
- Completely wireless and wearable system
- High biomechanical resolution
- Long battery life
Insole based wearable sensor systems are able to fullfill those requirements by combining pressure and inertial sensor systems into a fully integrated design. Therefore, we developed a prototype sensor insole with a focus on home-monitoring applications. An overview of the current system is shown in the image below:
