| PhD Seminar

Name of the Speaker: Mr. Shubhanshu Sharma (EE20D413)
Guide: Prof. Boby George
Venue: ESB-244 (Seminar Hall)
Online meeting link: https://meet.google.com/qgm-vbnv-yhj
Date/Time: 22nd January 2025 (Wednesday), 4:00 PM
Title: A Novel Wearable Sensing Technique for Simultaneous Analysis of Human Gait and Pathway Classification Using Electrical Impedance of Ground

Abstract :

The type of walking pathway influences gait. Thus, a wearable gait sensing technique is important for continuous gait analysis. However, most of the wearable sensing technologies employed in gait analysis solely provide data on gait parameters and do not have mechanisms to sense and account for the type of pathways. In this talk, a novel technique is developed to simultaneously identify some of the spatiotemporal gait parameters and the type of pathway on which the subject is walking. This is achieved by automatically measuring the electrical impedance of the ground between the two shoes using a specially developed sensing system. In this talk, a novel method will be discussed to calculate gait parameters derived using the impedance values measured between the shoes. These impedance values change as the legs move, primarily due to changes in capacitance between the shoe and the pathway. A suitable algorithm is developed and tested to estimate the gait parameters and walking speed from the developed prototype, and this is compared with the parameters obtained from reference force plate-based sensing. The testing is done on seven human subjects. The average root mean square error values for different gait parameters were found to be 0.02 s, 1.4 cm, 2.6 cm, 0.07 s, 0.8 steps/min, 2.24 % and 2.24 %, for stride time, stride length, step length, step time, cadence, stance phase, swing phase, respectively and a worst-case error of ±5 % in walking speed is observed. Further, the human subjects walked on different pedestrian pathways. Different features were extracted from the impedance waveform, which helped in successfully classifying all the six types of pathways we tested.