Sensors (Nov 2018)

Template-Based Step Detection with Inertial Measurement Units

  • Laurent Oudre,
  • Rémi Barrois-Müller,
  • Thomas Moreau,
  • Charles Truong,
  • Aliénor Vienne-Jumeau,
  • Damien Ricard,
  • Nicolas Vayatis,
  • Pierre-Paul Vidal

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s18114033
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 18, no. 11
p. 4033

Abstract

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This article presents a method for step detection from accelerometer and gyrometer signals recorded with Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs). The principle of our step detection algorithm is to recognize the start and end times of the steps in the signal thanks to a predefined library of templates. The algorithm is tested on a database of 1020 recordings, composed of healthy subjects and patients with various neurological or orthopedic troubles. Simulations on more than 40,000 steps show that the template-based method achieves remarkable results with a 98% recall and a 98% precision. The method adapts well to pathological subjects and can be used in a medical context for robust step estimation and gait characterization.

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