title: Evaluation of a Low-Cost Pneumatic Plantar Pressure Insole for Predicting Ground Contact Kinetics.
abstract: Instrumented insoles could benefit locomotion research on healthy and clinical populations by providing data in natural settings outside of the laboratory. We designed a low-cost, instrumented insole with 8 pneumatic bladders to measure localized plantar pressure information. We collected gait data during treadmill walking at 1.0 m/s and 1.5 m/s and for sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit tasks for 10 subjects. We estimated a common representation of ground kinetics (3-component force vector, 2-component center of pressure position vector, and a single-component torque vector) from the insole data. We trained an intertask neural network for each component of the kinetic data. For the walking tasks at 1.0 m/s and 1.5 m/s, the normalized root mean square error was between 3.1% and 12.9% and for the sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit tasks, the normalized root mean square error was between 3.3% and 21.3% Our findings suggest that the proposed low-cost, instrumented insoles could provide useful data about movement kinetics during real-world activities.
authors.affiliation: School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
authors.forename: Daniel A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Jacobs
authors.forename: Daniel P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Ferris
mesh_terms: D000399:Air Pressure; D000465:Algorithms; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005528:Foot / Q000502:physiology*; D061826:Foot Orthoses; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008365:Manometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011312:Pressure; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D014160:Transducers, Pressure; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult