Research on Non-Invasive Wireless Wearable Sensor System Using Virtual and Physical Sensors for Lower Limb Motion Analysis

Abstract

Abstract.Ambulatory assessment of gait posture is a promising clinical tool to diagnose walking disabilities. This paper presents a method using non-invasive wireless wearable sensor system based on virtual and physical sensors to estimate the motion of lower limb. The data measured by accelerometers and magnetometers was used to calculate the joint motion data as measured by a virtual sensor inside the joint. There is no integration of acceleration or angular velocity for the joint positions and rotations, which is an improvement on the previous methods. There are no physical sensors implanted in the knee joint based on the virtual-sensor difference based algorithm, therefore it is feasible to analyze knee joint kinematics with less numbers and types of sensors noninvasively. Finally wireless transceiver modules are integrated with the sensors and microprocessor composing a wearable sensor system to achieve real time analysis for the lower limb motion.