A Wireless Flexible Sensorized Insole for Gait Analysis

TLDR

The pressure‑sensing insole is based on optoelectronic technology developed at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. The paper presents a novel pressure‑sensitive foot insole for real‑time monitoring of plantar pressure during walking. The insole comprises 64 pressure‑sensitive elements on a flexible substrate, an integrated electronic board for high‑frequency acquisition, pre‑filtering, and wireless transmission to a remote unit, and is low‑cost, low‑power, battery‑powered. The insole was experimentally validated with healthy subjects walking at different speeds and benchmarked against an instrumented force platform.

Abstract

This paper introduces the design and development of a novel pressure-sensitive foot insole for real-time monitoring of plantar pressure distribution during walking. The device consists of a flexible insole with 64 pressure-sensitive elements and an integrated electronic board for high-frequency data acquisition, pre-filtering, and wireless transmission to a remote data computing/storing unit. The pressure-sensitive technology is based on an optoelectronic technology developed at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. The insole is a low-cost and low-power battery-powered device. The design and development of the device is presented along with its experimental characterization and validation with healthy subjects performing a task of walking at different speeds, and benchmarked against an instrumented force platform.