Plantar pressure monitoring by developing a real-time wireless system

Ability to walk plays an important role in human daily activities. During walking, the pressure pattern of the sole of the foot contains valuable information about the anatomic and physiologic situation of the body. Plantar pressure measurement systems can provide this information for scientists. In this paper, a device developed to measure plantar pressure and wirelessly transmit the data to a host computer is introduced in details. The pressure sensors are placed in a normal shoe. 32 force sensitive resistors (FSRs) are arranged in different areas of the insole of the shoe. An ARM-based microcontroller converts the plantar pressure to a digital pattern. This pattern is then transmitted to a host laptop, by means of a RF module. This device can be used outdoors and the shoe-wearing subjects can easily walk up to 60 meter far from the laptop. A graphical user interface (GUI) is designed to manage displaying and saving process of the received data and also to role in calibrating sequence of the FSRs. The system was tested by 5 volunteers and its abilities were successfully verified.