Smart Shoes for Temporal Identification and Corrections to Assist People with Abnormal Walking Patterns

Arthritis is a very common medical issue which describes joint pain or joint disease. The most common type, being Osteoarthritis, is due to the cartilage in a joint wearing away over time which leaves the bones to rub against each other causing pain and discomfort. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 50 million adults have been diagnosed with Arthritis in the United States of America which is 1 in 5 adults. This equates to a financial cost of $304 Billion in 2013 between direct medical cost and lost wages. Over a period of time, it has been observed that an uneven distribution of pressure (body weight) across the foot while walking increases wear and tear to knee cartilage and thus leads to Osteoarthritis. Therefore, we propose a novel smart shoe for temporal identification and correction for people with abnormal walking patterns consisting of uneven pressure distributions. Our smart shoes include five pressure sensors, four vibrators, memory storage, a processor, a Bluetooth transceiver, a power supply, and a Smart Software application on a Smartphone which houses a Decision Tree (DT) for walking pattern predictions. Our Machine Learning approach has a 91.68% accuracy and shows promise for assisting people with Arthritis.