Development of Minimum Toe Clearance Detector for a Tripping Prediction

Abstract

Falls during the walking cause the injury or death on elderly people. Most of falls result from tripping, Minimum Toe Clearance(MinTC) indicating easiness to tripping was studied by a lot of researchers. It was reported that variability of MinTC was greater in the elderly than the young. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to make a judgement on easiness to tripping using one - dimensional luminance distribution sensor. For the purpose, we judged normal gait or dangerous gait using our method. As a result, our method could obtain the significant difference. In conclusion, we could clearly judge normal gait or dangerous gait. Additionally, we combined the Laser Range Finder as similar system. Based on the comparison results, it is required to expand the effective detection range.