Gait Phase Recognition using Textile-based Sensor

Human gait phase detection has become an emerging field of study due to its impact in various clinical studies. In this study, a system is developed to detect the toe-off, mid-swing, heel-strike, and heel-off phases of a gait cycle in real-time by using a textile-based capacitive strain sensor mounted on the kneepad. Five healthy subjects performed walks including those four phases of the gait at a constant speed and gait distance in a laboratory environment while wearing the kneepad. The phases are labeled according to the gyroscope data of the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) located on the kneepad. An Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) based network is utilized to detect the phases using the capacitance data obtained from the strain sensor. Recognition of four phases with 87 % accuracy is accomplished.