TY - GEN
T1 - Piezoresistive Sensor Array Design for Shoe-integrated Continuous Body Weight and Gait Measurement
AU - Muzaffar, Shahzad
AU - Elfadel, Ibrahim Abe M.
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work has been supported by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) under the Abu Dhabi SRC Center of Excellence on Energy-Efficient Electronic Systems (ACE4S), Contract 2013 HJ2440, with customized funding from the Mubadala Development Company, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 IEEE.
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Wearable pedobarography is expected to bring about significant improvements in a variety of healthcare and medical domains, including portable gait analysis and monitoring, continuous weight estimation, physical therapy, prosthetic limbs, and robotics. The traditional methods use direct shoe-insole placement of force sensors to record ground-reaction-force (GRF) patterns. Since they tap only a few points under the feet, they are not suitable to collect the total applied force due to the spread-out effect. This paper presents a piezoresistive array design for a shoe-integrated sensor array to continuously measure the total GRF throughout the walk cycle. The mechanical design of the array concentrates the applied force onto optimally placed points under the shoe sole using layered, cleat-like structures that are meant to improve the reliability and repeatability of the individual piezoresisitive force sensors. The signals of the concentrated forces are processed by a shoe-integrated micro-controller to extract gait and weight information. A proof-of-concept prototype is tested with both static and walking subjects and is shown to accurately measure body weight information throughout the walk cycle.
AB - Wearable pedobarography is expected to bring about significant improvements in a variety of healthcare and medical domains, including portable gait analysis and monitoring, continuous weight estimation, physical therapy, prosthetic limbs, and robotics. The traditional methods use direct shoe-insole placement of force sensors to record ground-reaction-force (GRF) patterns. Since they tap only a few points under the feet, they are not suitable to collect the total applied force due to the spread-out effect. This paper presents a piezoresistive array design for a shoe-integrated sensor array to continuously measure the total GRF throughout the walk cycle. The mechanical design of the array concentrates the applied force onto optimally placed points under the shoe sole using layered, cleat-like structures that are meant to improve the reliability and repeatability of the individual piezoresisitive force sensors. The signals of the concentrated forces are processed by a shoe-integrated micro-controller to extract gait and weight information. A proof-of-concept prototype is tested with both static and walking subjects and is shown to accurately measure body weight information throughout the walk cycle.
KW - biomedical IoT
KW - body weight estimation
KW - flexible packaging
KW - gait analysis
KW - Piezoresistive force sensor
KW - sensor array design
KW - shoe-integrated sensor
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85069457801&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/DTIP.2019.8752629
DO - 10.1109/DTIP.2019.8752629
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85069457801
T3 - 2019 Symposium on Design, Test, Integration and Packaging of MEMS and MOEMS, DTIP 2019
BT - 2019 Symposium on Design, Test, Integration and Packaging of MEMS and MOEMS, DTIP 2019
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2019 Symposium on Design, Test, Integration and Packaging of MEMS and MOEMS, DTIP 2019
Y2 - 12 May 2019 through 15 May 2019
ER -