Gait Alert Device

Abstract

Parkinson Disease (PD) is a common neurological disorder, due to the progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons inside brain and the presence of Lewy bodies (abnormal neurons). Parkinson Disease affects both the intentional and reflex locomotion of the patients suffering, and the primary symptoms includes tremors, bradykinesia, rigid motions, freezing of gait (FOG), loss of muscular reflex response, which causes postural instability and falling. Fall prevention therefore becomes important to patients suffering from Parkinson Disease. The main objective of this projectis to design a gait alert device for Parkinson disease patient. Different kinds of force sensors, including strain gauge, piezo-resistive force sensor, and capacitive sensor is compared. A low-cost data acquisition system is built to collect the force data from different positions on the insole device, and motion data from inertial measurement unit (IMU). Finally, an algorithm is employed to recognize different gait phases and approximate the position of Center of gravity of the user by processing the collected data.