Determination of gait parameters in real‐world environment using low‐cost inertial sensors

The ageing society causes an increasing need for gait monitoring in daily life to preserve the mobility of older people. Therefore, flexible low‐cost and easy‐to‐apply sensor networks are necessary. This study evaluates two in‐house developed inertial sensors for their capability of detecting spatial and temporal parameters of gait by using a time‐warping algorithm for stride segmentation. Thereby, impaired or wheeled walker supported gait can be analysed using a patient specific template. The results prove the capability to exclude sequences from the motion that do not correspond to strides and to detect spatio‐temporal parameters reliably. For the application to geriatric patients, however, further research is necessary.