Forearm Motion Tracking with Estimating Joint Angles from Inertial Sensor Signals

In this paper, we have attempted forearm movement tracking in 3-D by estimating joint angles of a forearm with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) consisting of a tri-axis accelerometer and gyroscope sensors. As the feedback of the forearm motion tracking, we have implemented a 3-D digital forearm model based on the kinematic chain theory utilizing super-quadric surfaces and joints, and attempted to control the digital arm with the estimated joint angles via Kalman filtering. Some preliminary experimental results are presented.