WEARABLE SENSORS BASED REAL-TIME MONITORING OF GAIT KINEMATICS FOR LOWER EXTREMITY EXOSKELETONS

This paper presents a real-time gait analyzer used to record the gait pattern of a subject which can beprimary input to lower extremity exoskeletons. Studies have been carried out on walking behaviour ofsubjects indicating that lower extremity exoskeletons can take inputs as hip and knee joint movement anglesin sagittal plane. Wearable gait motion analyzer can be used to operate lower extremity exoskeletons in twodifferent modes: real-time gait and pre-defined gait. For pre-defined gait mode, wearable gait motionanalyzer provides wearer specific gait pattern of hip and knee joint angles in sagittal plane. A comparisonstudy on gait data obtained from gait lab and wearable gait motion analyser was carried out and showed 98%correlation match. Gyroscopes of IMU are also used to measure angular velocity of hip and knee joints toestimate specifications of exoskeleton actuators.