Subject-Independent Ankle Joint Power Estimation with Two IMUs During Flat and Inclined Walking

Assessing ankle joint power during real-life scenarios is crucial for analyzing human push-off and detecting abnormal gait patterns. However, traditional joint power monitoring methods require expensive and professional equipment, limiting their use to gait laboratories. To address this limitation, we propose a portable and robust two-stage approach that estimates ankle joint power using two inertial measurement units (IMU) sensors placed on the shank and foot, respectively. Our subject-independent CNN model accurately assessed ankle joint power during flat and inclined walking across 28 walking speeds and 6 ramp inclines. This solution facilitates ankle joint power assessment outside of gait laboratories and could serve as a foundation to enable gait abnormality evaluation in patients in hospitals, clinics, and home-based settings.