Evaluation of wearable gyroscope and accelerometer sensor (PocketIMU2) during walking and sit-to-stand motions

Recently healthcare of the elderly people has become a serious issue in medical and rehabilitation areas. In order to know their functional mobility and provide sufficient medical treatment, it is important to measure their body state precisely and objectively. Therefore we developed a wearable and wireless sensor of gyroscope and accelerometer (PocketIMU2) as an easy and precise measurement of human motions. In the sensor, we employed a small and high accurate LiNbO3 crystal to achieve joint angle computation with simple integration of angular velocity. In the current paper, we evaluate the accuracy of the sensor in two important basic motion, such as a walking and sit-to-stand motions. Computed joint angles of ankle, knee, and hip are compared to the reference data measured from a optical motion capture system in term of coefficients of correlation and root mean square error. As a result, coefficient of correlation showed very high value for all joint angles, and root mean square error was adequately small. This strongly supports the usage of our developed gyroscope and accelerometer sensor for monitoring human body movement for medical usage.