TY - JOUR
T1 - Local dynamic stability assessment of motion impaired elderly using electronic textile pants
AU - Liu, Jian
AU - Lockhart, Thurmon E.
AU - Jones, Mark
AU - Martin, Tom
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received October 20, 2006; revised November 26, 2007. First published June 9, 2008; current version published October 1, 2008. This paper was recommended for publication by Associate Editor P. Fiorini and Editor D. Meldrum upon evaluation of the reviewers’ comments. This work was supported in part by the Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Engineering Grant to the corresponding author. Data collection was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants CCR-0219809 and CNS-0447741.
PY - 2008/10
Y1 - 2008/10
N2 - A clear association has been demonstrated between gait stability and falls in the elderly. Integration of wearable computing and human dynamic stability measures into home automation systems may help differentiate fall-prone individuals in a residential environment. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the capability of a pair of electronic textile (e-textile) pants system to assess local dynamic stability and to differentiate motion-impaired elderly from their healthy counterparts. A pair of e-textile pants comprised of numerous e-TAGs at locations corresponding to lower extremity joints was developed to collect acceleration, angular velocity and piezoelectric data. Four motion-impaired elderly together with nine healthy individuals (both young and old) participated in treadmill walking with a motion capture system simultaneously collecting kinematic data. Local dynamic stability, characterized by maximum Lyapunov exponent, was computed based on vertical acceleration and angular velocity at lower extremity joints for the measurements from both e-textile and motion capture systems. Results indicated that the motion-impaired elderly had significantly higher maximum Lyapunov exponents (computed from vertical acceleration data) than healthy individuals at the right ankle and hip joints. In addition, maximum Lyapunov exponents assessed by the motion capture system were found to be significantly higher than those assessed by the e-textile system. Despite the difference between these measurement techniques, attaching accelerometers at the ankle and hip joints was shown to be an effective sensor configuration. It was concluded that the e-textile pants system, via dynamic stability assessment, has the potential to identify motion-impaired elderly.
AB - A clear association has been demonstrated between gait stability and falls in the elderly. Integration of wearable computing and human dynamic stability measures into home automation systems may help differentiate fall-prone individuals in a residential environment. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the capability of a pair of electronic textile (e-textile) pants system to assess local dynamic stability and to differentiate motion-impaired elderly from their healthy counterparts. A pair of e-textile pants comprised of numerous e-TAGs at locations corresponding to lower extremity joints was developed to collect acceleration, angular velocity and piezoelectric data. Four motion-impaired elderly together with nine healthy individuals (both young and old) participated in treadmill walking with a motion capture system simultaneously collecting kinematic data. Local dynamic stability, characterized by maximum Lyapunov exponent, was computed based on vertical acceleration and angular velocity at lower extremity joints for the measurements from both e-textile and motion capture systems. Results indicated that the motion-impaired elderly had significantly higher maximum Lyapunov exponents (computed from vertical acceleration data) than healthy individuals at the right ankle and hip joints. In addition, maximum Lyapunov exponents assessed by the motion capture system were found to be significantly higher than those assessed by the e-textile system. Despite the difference between these measurement techniques, attaching accelerometers at the ankle and hip joints was shown to be an effective sensor configuration. It was concluded that the e-textile pants system, via dynamic stability assessment, has the potential to identify motion-impaired elderly.
KW - E-textile
KW - Local dynamic stability
KW - Slips and falls
KW - Wearable computing
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U2 - 10.1109/TASE.2008.923821
DO - 10.1109/TASE.2008.923821
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:54849145800
SN - 1545-5955
VL - 5
SP - 696
EP - 702
JO - IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
JF - IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
IS - 4
M1 - 4538234
ER -