title: Kinematics based sensory fusion for wearable motion assessment in human walking.
abstract: Measuring the kinematic parameters in unconstrained human motion is becoming crucial for providing feedback information in wearable robotics and sports monitoring. This paper presents a novel sensory fusion algorithm for assessing the orientations of human body segments in long-term human walking based on signals from wearable sensors. The basic idea of the proposed algorithm is to constantly fuse the measured segment's angular velocity and linear acceleration via known kinematic relations between segments. The wearable sensory system incorporates seven inertial measurement units attached to the human body segments and two instrumented shoe insoles. The proposed system was experimentally validated in a long-term walking on a treadmill and on a polygon with stairs simulating different activities in everyday life. The outputs were compared to the reference parameters measured by a stationary optical system. Results show accurate joint angle measurements (error median below 5°) in all evaluated walking conditions with no expressed drift over time.
authors.affiliation: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Tržaška cesta 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Electronic address: sebastjan.slajpah@fe.uni-lj.si.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Slajpah
authors.affiliation: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Tržaška cesta 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Electronic address: roman.kamnik@fe.uni-lj.si.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kamnik
authors.affiliation: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Tržaška cesta 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Electronic address: marko.munih@fe.uni-lj.si.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Munih
mesh_terms: D000054:Acceleration; D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D000843:Ankle Joint / Q000502:physiology; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D006621:Hip Joint / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007719:Knee Joint / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Extended Kalman filter; Inertial measurement unit; Kinematic model; Long-term walking; Measuring insoles; Sensory fusion