Development of a body joint angle measurement system using IMU sensors

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for measuring and monitoring human body joint angles using inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors. This type of monitoring is beneficial for therapists and physicians because it facilitates remote assessment of patient activities. In our approach, two IMUs are mounted on the upper leg and the lower leg to measure the Euler angles of each segment. The Euler angles are sent via Bluetooth protocols to a pc for calculating the knee joint angle. In our experiments, we utilized a motion capture system to accurately measure the knee joint angle and used this as the ground truth to assess the accuracy of the IMU system. The range of average error of the system across a variety of motion trials was 0.08 to 3.06 degrees. In summary, the accuracy of the IMU measurement system currently outperforms existing wearable systems such as conductive fiber optic sensors and flex-sensors.