Publication . Viegas, Vítor; Pereira, José Miguel Costa Dias; Postolache, Octavian; Girão, Pedro Silva
This paper presents the Spy Walker, a measurement
system intended to characterize gait in walker assistive devices.
The proposed system can be easily integrated into any commercial
walker without any loss of native functionality. The system makes
use of e-textile electrodes to sense the heart rate of the user, load
cells to measure the force applied on the walker legs, and an
inertial measurement unit to sense motion and orientation. These
signals are sampled locally and then transferred over a Bluetooth
link to a remote host where they are processed in real time. Data
processing includes the detection, classification and
characterization of steps. A rich set of parameters is presented for
each step, including estimates of unbalance and motor
incoordination, travelled distance and azimuth, and lift of the
walker frame. This information can be used by a physiotherapist
to assess objectively the physical condition of the user, and tune
the rehabilitation therapy if needed.
