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Design of a Plantar Pressure Insole Measuring System Based on Modular Photoelectric Pressure Sensor Unit

Accurately perceiving and predicting the parameters related to human walking is very important for man–machine coupled cooperative control systems such as exoskeletons and power prostheses. Plantar pressure data is rich in human gait and posture information and is an essential source of reference in...

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Autores principales: Ren, Bin, Liu, Jianwei
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8199404/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34072553
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21113780
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author Ren, Bin
Liu, Jianwei
author_facet Ren, Bin
Liu, Jianwei
author_sort Ren, Bin
collection PubMed
description Accurately perceiving and predicting the parameters related to human walking is very important for man–machine coupled cooperative control systems such as exoskeletons and power prostheses. Plantar pressure data is rich in human gait and posture information and is an essential source of reference information as the input of the exoskeleton control system. Therefore, the proper design of the pressure sensing insole and validation is a big challenge considering the requirements such as convenience, reliability, no interference and so on. In this research, we developed a low-cost modular sensing unit based on the principle of photoelectric sensing and designed a plantar pressure sensing insole to achieve the purpose of sensing human walking gait and posture information. On the one hand, the sensor unit is made of economy-friendly commercial flexible circuits and elastic silicone, and the mechanical and electrical characteristics of the modular sensor unit are evaluated by a self-developed pressure-related calibration system. The calibration results show that the modular sensor based on the photoelectric sensing principle has fast response and negligible hysteresis. On the other hand, we analyzed the area where the plantar pressure is densely distributed. One benefit of the modular sensing unit design is that it is rather convenient to fabricate different insole solutions, so we fabricated and compared several pressure-sensitive insole solutions in this preliminary study. During the dynamic locomotion experiments of wearing the pressure-sensing insole, the time series signal of each sensor unit was collected and analyzed. The results show that the pressure sensing insole based on the photoelectric effect can sense the distribution of the plantar pressure by capturing the deformation of the insole caused by the foot contact during locomotion, and provide reliable gait information for wearable applications.
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spelling pubmed-81994042021-06-14 Design of a Plantar Pressure Insole Measuring System Based on Modular Photoelectric Pressure Sensor Unit Ren, Bin Liu, Jianwei Sensors (Basel) Article Accurately perceiving and predicting the parameters related to human walking is very important for man–machine coupled cooperative control systems such as exoskeletons and power prostheses. Plantar pressure data is rich in human gait and posture information and is an essential source of reference information as the input of the exoskeleton control system. Therefore, the proper design of the pressure sensing insole and validation is a big challenge considering the requirements such as convenience, reliability, no interference and so on. In this research, we developed a low-cost modular sensing unit based on the principle of photoelectric sensing and designed a plantar pressure sensing insole to achieve the purpose of sensing human walking gait and posture information. On the one hand, the sensor unit is made of economy-friendly commercial flexible circuits and elastic silicone, and the mechanical and electrical characteristics of the modular sensor unit are evaluated by a self-developed pressure-related calibration system. The calibration results show that the modular sensor based on the photoelectric sensing principle has fast response and negligible hysteresis. On the other hand, we analyzed the area where the plantar pressure is densely distributed. One benefit of the modular sensing unit design is that it is rather convenient to fabricate different insole solutions, so we fabricated and compared several pressure-sensitive insole solutions in this preliminary study. During the dynamic locomotion experiments of wearing the pressure-sensing insole, the time series signal of each sensor unit was collected and analyzed. The results show that the pressure sensing insole based on the photoelectric effect can sense the distribution of the plantar pressure by capturing the deformation of the insole caused by the foot contact during locomotion, and provide reliable gait information for wearable applications. MDPI 2021-05-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8199404/ /pubmed/34072553 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21113780 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ren, Bin
Liu, Jianwei
Design of a Plantar Pressure Insole Measuring System Based on Modular Photoelectric Pressure Sensor Unit
title Design of a Plantar Pressure Insole Measuring System Based on Modular Photoelectric Pressure Sensor Unit
title_full Design of a Plantar Pressure Insole Measuring System Based on Modular Photoelectric Pressure Sensor Unit
title_fullStr Design of a Plantar Pressure Insole Measuring System Based on Modular Photoelectric Pressure Sensor Unit
title_full_unstemmed Design of a Plantar Pressure Insole Measuring System Based on Modular Photoelectric Pressure Sensor Unit
title_short Design of a Plantar Pressure Insole Measuring System Based on Modular Photoelectric Pressure Sensor Unit
title_sort design of a plantar pressure insole measuring system based on modular photoelectric pressure sensor unit
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8199404/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34072553
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21113780
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