A Real-Time Gait Event Detection for Lower Limb Prosthesis Control and Evaluation

Abstract

Abstract-Lower extremity amputees suffer from mobility limitations which will result in a degradation of their quality of life. Wearable sensors are frequently used to assess spatiotemporal, kinematic and kinetic parameters providing the means to establish an interactive control of the amputee-prosthesisenvironment system. Gait events and the gait phase detection of an amputee's locomotion are vital for controlling lower limb prosthetic devices. The paper presents an approach to real-time gait event detection for lower limb amputees using a wireless gyroscope attached to the shank when performing level ground and ramp activities. The results were validated using both healthy and amputee subjects and showed that the time differences in identifying Initial Contact (IC) and Toe Off (TO) events were larger in a transfemoral amputee when compared to the control subjects and a transtibial amputee (TTA). Overall, the time difference latency lies within a range of ± 50 ms while the detection rate was 100% for all activities. Based on the validated results, the IC and TO events can be accurately detected using the proposed system in both control subjects and amputees when performing activities of daily living and can also be utilized in the clinical setup for rehabilitation and assessing the performance of lower limb prosthesis users.

Portable haptic device for lower limb amputee gait feedback: Assessing static and dynamic perceptibility

“…This might be attributed to the participants mistaking the general vibration caused by walking as a form of stimuli or due to losing concentration. This proposed haptic feedback system is intended to be used in lower limb prostheses feedback scheme, coupled with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) placed at prosthetic shank/pylon developed in our previous study [17] which was capable of identifying gait events in real-time with high accuracy in both level ground and inclined walking surface. Figure 5 shows the intended overall feedback scheme.…”

Heuristic based gait event detection for human lower limb movement

“…The filtered signal has reduced the oscillations that will avoid false event detection. The selection of cutoff frequency is based on empirical results [5]. The resultant gyro signal was segmented with a window size of 110ms.…”

“…Gait events can be detected using either force based measurement systems by means of footswitches such as force sensitive resistors (FSR) [4], or wearable sensor such as Inertia Measurement Unit (IMU) [5]. To perform outdoor activities for longer period of time, it is crucial to use the systems which are reliable, portable, small, inexpensive, and with low power consumption [6][7][8].…”

“…Patients with pathologic gait suffer from higher energy consumption and risk of falls. Gait analysis and event detection has been used in different applications using ambulatory gait systems to evaluate and improve patients' motilities and to control the functional electrical stimulation (FES) [1][2][3].Gait events can be detected using either force based measurement systems by means of footswitches such as force sensitive resistors (FSR) [4], or wearable sensor such as Inertia Measurement Unit (IMU) [5]. To perform outdoor activities for longer period of time, it is crucial to use the systems which are reliable, portable, small, inexpensive, and with low power consumption [6][7][8].…”

Whole Body Awareness for Controlling a Robotic Transfemoral Prosthesis

“…These methods lacked predictive capabilities as most predictions of terrain occurred after ground contact performing fuzzy-logic event-based (Yuan et al, 2015) or k-Nearest-Neighbor classification or implementing discrete finite state machines (Maqbool et al, 2016). …”