Development of InnovaBoard: An interactive balance board for balancing training and ankle rehabilitation

Ankle sprain is one of the most common injuries among sports with high occurrence and recurrence rate of over 70%. This injury can be prevented with proprioceptive trainings, such as wobble board training. These training can increase range of motion in the ankle joint complex and strengthen musculature of the foot ankle and lower leg. However, most basic wobble and rocker board lack biofeedback during training and objective assessment. Therefore, the aim of this project is to develop a portable and interactive balance board that provides multiple levels of training difficulty, combined with objective assessment and interactive virtual reality games. This paper presents the development of the InnovaBoard, its sensor performance evaluation and functionality in assessing balancing skill of healthy subjects. Results show that InnovaBoard has high accuracy of ±0.04% and repeatability of ±0.06 degrees. Preliminary trial shows the developed assessment program is able to differentiate significant difference (p = 0.05) between double-leg stance balance test with eyes open and close.