TailGait: A light-weight wearable gait analysis system

Abstract

Gait parameters such as step and stride lengths, step and stride times, and time spent in single and double support are important factors for physicians to diagnose and/or monitor patients. Typically, assessing these spatial and temporal parameters accurately require an expensive equipment, which cannot be afforded by most general hospitals in developing countries. This paper presents a light-weight and easy-to-use gait analysing system called TailGait, which allows users to be able to measure these essential gait parameters. A concept of measuring the displacement of trunk as the stepping distance has been proposed, instead of using inertia measurement sensors which cannot avoid the integration error. TailGait has been compared with Computer Dyno Graphy (GDC), a commercial gait analysis system. The result shows that temporal and spatial parameters can be collected precisely by the TailGait and there is a possibility to apply this system for clinical tests in the future.