In-Home Gait Health Monitoring Through Footstep-Induced Structural Vibrations

Graduate Researcher: Yiwen Dong

Faculty Advisor: Hae Young Noh

The objective of this study is to achieve gait health monitoring through footstep-induced structural vibrations. Monitoring an individual's gait health at home is critical for early diagnosis, progressive tracking, and rehabilitation of various neuroskeletal and neuromuscular disorders, which affect every 1 in 6 people in today's world. The current gait health monitoring methods have adopted various sensing systems, including cameras, wearable devices, and force plates/pressure mats, to achieve accurate gait assessments for individuals. However, they have operational requirements such as carrying devices, dense deployment, and direct line-of-sight, which are not suitable for a less controlled environment in non-clinical settings. To overcome these limitations, this study utilizes structural vibration sensing to achieve in-home gait health monitoring with passive and sparsely deployed sensors. Our approach enables long-term, continuous monitoring of an individual's gait health at home.