Abstract
The purpose of this study is to develop a practical gait-event detection system which is necessary for the FES (functional electrical stimulation) control of locomotion in paralyzed patients. The system is comprised of a sensor board and an event recognition algorithm. We focused on the practicality improvement of the system through 1) using accelerometer to get the angle of shank and dispensing with the foot-switches having limitation in indoor or barefoot usage and 2) using a rule-base instead of threshold to determine the heel-off/heel-strike events corresponding the stimulation on/off timing. The sensor signals are transmitted through RF communication and gait-events was detected using the peaks in shank angle. The system could detect two critical gait-events in all five paralyzed patients. The standard deviation of the gait events time from the peaks were smaller when 1.5Hz cutoff frequency was used in the derivation of the shank angle from the acceleration signals.
