Investigation of Sensor Parameters for Kinematic Assessment of Steady State Running Using Foot Mounted IMUs

摘要

The continuous sensing of kinematics provides an opportunity to monitor changes in sporting technique or to aid in injury rehabilitation. Inertial sensors are now small enough to integrate into footwear, providing a potential platform for continuous monitoring that does not require additional components to be worn by the athlete and can be used to assess foot kinematics during running. To facilitate widespread adoption, sensor systems must be as cheap as possible. To achieve this it is required that such systems be engineered with sampling rates that are not unnecessarily high and with sensor components that meet the requirements of the task, including required accuracy. We investigate multiple sensor parameters (sampling rate, acceleration range) and their effect on the accuracy of kinematic assessment using foot worn inertial sensors. We find that Extended Kalman Filter based trajectory recovery seems to be little affected by sampling rates until below 250Hz. We investigate impact accelerations using an inertial measurement unit attached to the foot and find that, at 250Hz, the acceleration signal peaks at up to 70g around heel strike.