| Group |
2015-1 |
Status |
completed |
| Title |
Gait monitoring insoles for running shoes |
| Supervisor |
Dr. Glenn Cowan |
| Description |
The advent of minimalist running shoes has shone a spotlight on the importance of running gait and the possible relationship between running gait and overuse injury. A soon-to-be-released wearable fabric sock from Sensoria purports to indicate to runners if they are landing mid-foot or are heal striking. However, the technology does not appear to measure the ground-strike force and report on its peak magnitude and its rate of onset.
In this project, students will build on past and on-going work. The group will select an appropriate sensor technology to measure the distribution of force under the shoe with the goal of giving a visual profile of its distribution along with a measure of the rate of onset. This will be streamed to a smart phone.
Information from the sensors should be processed by a suitable analog-to-digital converter and microcontroller.
Other metrics to consider measuring are the cadence (strides per minute) of the user as well as the height of the gate cycle. These measurements can be enabled through the use of an accelerometer.
The ideal implementation will fit nicely into shoes with possible modifications to the shoes. It will transmit wirelessly to a hand-held device such as a smart phone. This year, the project will involve development of the smart-phone app in order to make the hardware truly useful.
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| Requirement |
Electronics, micro-controller programming, programming in high-level languages. DSP, analog filters. An interest in running is an important asset for this project. |
| Tools |
[Software, hardware, test equipment, etc]
Code composer for micro controllers. Scopes etc for the analog interface circuitry.
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| Number of Students |
3 |
| Students |
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| Comments: |
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