Gait Detection using a Single Accelerometer

The research of gait parameters is of great significance to understand the law of human motion and the coordination between limbs. To obtain accurate gait parameters, it is necessary to study the contact states of the heel and the toe against the ground during walking, that is, Heel Strike (HS) and Toe Off (TO), which are the basis for dividing the starting point of gait and calculating the characteristic parameters such as gait period. This paper will present a new zero-crossing gait detection method based on a single accelerometer by attaching the accelerometer to the chest of the subject and collecting the triaxial acceleration data when the subject is walking. Equal ripple Finite Impulse Response (EFIR) band pass filter is adopted for data preprocessing, so that the characteristics of zero point in the signal is more obvious. The zero crossing method is used to detect HS, TO and other gait events, then the related gait temporal parameters are calculated. The parameters are compared with the gait parameters calculation system using lower limb motion capture device. The results show that the proposed method can achieve high PPV (Positive Predictive Values).