TY - JOUR
T1 - Wearable biofeedback system to induce desired walking speed in overground gait training
AU - Zhang, Huanghe
AU - Yin, Yefei
AU - Chen, Zhuo
AU - Zhang, Yufeng
AU - Rao, Ashwini K.
AU - Guo, Yi
AU - Zanotto, Damiano
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2020/7/2
Y1 - 2020/7/2
N2 - Biofeedback systems have been extensively used in walking exercises for gait improvement. Past research has focused on modulating the wearer’s cadence, gait variability, or symmetry, but none of the previous works has addressed the problem of inducing a desired walking speed in the wearer. In this paper, we present a new, minimally obtrusive wearable biofeedback system (WBS) that uses closed-loop vibrotactile control to elicit desired changes in the wearer’s walking speed, based on the predicted user response to anticipatory and delayed feedback. The performance of the proposed control was compared to conventional open-loop rhythmic vibrotactile stimulation with N = 10 healthy individuals who were asked to complete a set of walking tasks along an oval path. The closed-loop vibrotactile control consistently demonstrated better performance than the open-loop control in inducing desired changes in the wearer’s walking speed, both with constant and with time-varying target walking speeds. Neither open-loop nor closed-loop stimuli affected natural gait significantly, when the target walking speed was set to the individual’s preferred walking speed. Given the importance of walking speed as a summary indicator of health and physical performance, the closed-loop vibrotactile control can pave the way for new technology-enhanced protocols for gait rehabilitation.
AB - Biofeedback systems have been extensively used in walking exercises for gait improvement. Past research has focused on modulating the wearer’s cadence, gait variability, or symmetry, but none of the previous works has addressed the problem of inducing a desired walking speed in the wearer. In this paper, we present a new, minimally obtrusive wearable biofeedback system (WBS) that uses closed-loop vibrotactile control to elicit desired changes in the wearer’s walking speed, based on the predicted user response to anticipatory and delayed feedback. The performance of the proposed control was compared to conventional open-loop rhythmic vibrotactile stimulation with N = 10 healthy individuals who were asked to complete a set of walking tasks along an oval path. The closed-loop vibrotactile control consistently demonstrated better performance than the open-loop control in inducing desired changes in the wearer’s walking speed, both with constant and with time-varying target walking speeds. Neither open-loop nor closed-loop stimuli affected natural gait significantly, when the target walking speed was set to the individual’s preferred walking speed. Given the importance of walking speed as a summary indicator of health and physical performance, the closed-loop vibrotactile control can pave the way for new technology-enhanced protocols for gait rehabilitation.
KW - Closed-loop control
KW - Instrumented footwear
KW - Real-time gait parameter estimation
KW - SportSole
KW - Wearable biofeedback system
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U2 - 10.3390/s20144002
DO - 10.3390/s20144002
M3 - Article
C2 - 32708450
AN - SCOPUS:85088228967
SN - 1424-8220
VL - 20
SP - 1
EP - 15
JO - Sensors (Switzerland)
JF - Sensors (Switzerland)
IS - 14
M1 - 4002
ER -