Abstract: 

Human gait pathology can be caused by muscular-skeletal injuries, neurological damage, gradual degeneration and fatigue.  The basis of evidence-based medicine encourages clinicians to conduct objective gait analysis to identify and focus on treating the etiology of the pathology and not the compensatory mechanisms. 

At present, gait laboratories offer objective assessment using a cluster of vision sensors, in-ground force plates and electromyography (EMG).  Noteworthy issues are the finite measurement volume, cumbersome donning of markers and surface probes and a pre-determined walking path. Furthermore, this approach forbids an accurate representation of the subject's natural gait and does not account for temporal variation.

Miniature and low-cost inertial sensors, such as accelerometers and gyroscopes are potentially suitable for an objective assessment of the patients' natural gait.  In this presentation, the author presents the methodologies of inertial sensing based gait analysis, the potentials of encompassing computational intelligence with gait analysis, the results obtained up to date and the future research activities.  

About the Speaker: Yoong Ping is a Research Student with the department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering