Affordable Human Gait Analysis Using a Virtual Reality-Based Platform

• Published in: IEEE-RITA Vol. 15; no. 4; pp. 307 - 313
• Main Authors: Guzman, Juan David, Guzman, Diego Enrique, Rengifo, Carlos Felipe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.11.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: 360 degree video; Acceleration; Angular velocity; Data acquisition; Data processing; Display devices; Gait; Helmet mounted displays; Human gait analysis; Liapunov exponents; local stability; low cost platform; Lyapunov exponents; Matlab; Mobile handsets; Optical flow (image analysis); Resists; Stability analysis; Unity3D; Velocity measurement; Virtual environments; Virtual reality; Walking
• ISSN: 1932-8540; 2374-0132
• DOI: 10.1109/RITA.2020.3033219

This article presents a low-cost educational platform to teach human gait instability assessment using the Lyapunov exponents. The system consists of a cellphone used to measure the acceleration or angular velocity of human body segments, a head-mounted display device, a second cellphone used to visualize the virtual environment developed in Unity3D, a device used to measure the gait speed, and a MATLAB application for data processing. The proposed platform was tested on ten healthy subjects (33.4±9.1 years) under three walking conditions: (i) in a real-world environment, (ii) in a virtual corridor, and (iii) by adding optical flow perturbations to the virtual environment. A survey conducted in the elective class Automatic Systems of Analysis and Capture of Human Gait at Universidad del Cauca, showed the usability of the proposed platform.