Scientists Develop Wearable Sensors

 

Currently, in order to perform a detailed analysis of their walking gait, the patient must go to the clinic and walk on a pressure-sensitive mat. However, this situation may change due to the emergence of a new wearable system. First, there is already a wearable gait analysis technology combined with an inertial measurement unit (IMU), which combines an accelerometer and a gyroscope. But in most cases, this setting is limited to providing data on acceleration and foot rotation speed. Under the leadership of Dr. Boyd Anderson, scientists at the National University of Singapore have developed an experimental system that can provide more information. It is called MANA 2.0, and it combines four shoe modules (two on each foot) with IMU and ultra-wideband radio (UWB) sensors. When the patient daily work, the data is transferred from the module to the paired smart phones application that can access.

Anderson said that UWB technology can realize the distance measurement of the flight time, and then provide the distance information between the feet while walking. More specifically, it can measure the distance from heel to heel and toe to toe. Previously, this kind of data could only be collected by walking on the mat in the clinic. In actual tests, the new system was used to obtain a dataset of more than 2000 steps from 21 healthy volunteers. Compared with the "gold standard" mat technology, the researchers found that it has an average accuracy of 97.2% in measuring stride length and 95% to 97% in measuring the spatial position of the foot. As an added bonus, MANA 2.0 should be much cheaper than mats-it is estimated that the former is worth about US$500 per set, while the price of the latter may exceed US$10,000 per set.

"This (technology) will enable patients to take their own gait measurements anytime and anywhere without the need for physical supervision of clinicians," Anderson said. "The gait analysis wearable device supporting MANA 2.0 will also enable clinicians to remotely monitor the progress of patients through the data collected by mobile applications. As people’s demand for medical services continues to grow, such portable technology reduces the need for physical instruments