Development of a real-time IMU-based motion capture system for gait rehabilitation

A common problem among elderly people is the loss of motor ability. Rehabilitation exercises can help these people recover strength and maintain a good level of mobility. However, high costs and the need for special equipment make professional rehabilitation impractical for regular use in daily life, precluding elderly the possibility to perform focalized training at home. The idea of telerehabilitation is becoming more and more concrete with the rapid development of internet technology. Telerehabilitation would allow the user to perform exercises at home with online professional direction from the doctor. However, at the present state, the doctor cannot obtain real-time and quantitative data from the user, and this limits the training effectiveness. To overcome this problem, an extremely miniaturized, portable motion capture system, named WB-4R, has been developed. Calibration and real-time link orientation reconstruction are very important to improve the accuracy in real-time measurement. In this paper, using the positive results of preliminary experiments on lower limbs, the authors will show the feasibility of the method and confirm the effectiveness of the developed system.