Multisegmental Sensor Integration for Balance Control

Recent advances in Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) have made accessible a variety of extremely small, rugged, reliable, low power consumption, and inexpensive AHRS sensors for motion capture. A collection of these devices should be capable of providing similar proprioceptive information that the distributed biological sensors of the human body provide the brain to carry out complex mobility tasks. During the Phase I effort, EAI developed and demonstrated a system and approach for the integration of distributed wearable sensors capable of providing real-time center of gravity (COG) and center of pressure (COP) for an ambulatory human. Phase II proposes continuing the effort, focusing on developing a versatile sensor backbone design and sensor fusion algorithm that can, in real time, use combinations of different sensors to determine both the state, COP and COG of the wearer with minimal latency. The overall goal of the effort is to provide a system capable of providing real time measures of dynamic human balance.