An Instrumented Insole System for Gait Monitoring and Analysis

Insole pressure during walking or running could be used to analyze abnormality of kinetic measurement for broad applications as such a diabetic foot, knee injuries and neural disorder. Moreover, some application of biometrics and human behavior also had been identified based on gait pattern. This project purposed a prototype for measuring ground reaction force using developed an instrumented insole measurement system based on dual-parameters of gait monitoring and analysis; foot force and plantar flexion. The system comprised hardware such as force and angle sensors, signal conditioning circuit and data acquisition device and software for signal's visualization for user interface and real-time gait analysis. The sensors will be placed on top of the shoe insole for measuring force distribution on foot and foot plantar for measuring flexion angle wired to a data acquisition device. The locations of the sensors have been determined based on the footprint during the gait cycle. This paper also presented details of components involved in the measurement system. It has been demonstrated that the developed system prototype could be used in the clinical gait monitoring and analysis established based on the foot force and plantar angle starting from heals strike till toe-off positions.