Design of Low Cost Smart Insole for Real Time Measurement of Plantar Pressure

Abstract

Real time plantar pressure provides information critical to the understanding of gait mechanics and has a wide range of applications. In this study, smart insoles were designed and developed to measure real time foot plantar pressure. Key features of the insoles included cost-effectiveness, good working pressure detection range, wireless data transfer and real-time data analysis. Calibration of the sensing material was done and the resulting accuracy of the insoles was compared to that of a Kistler force plate, achieving an r 2 value of 0.981. Real-time visualization of pressure mapping was incorporated to enable intuitive understanding of relative plantar pressure distribution.

Centre of Pressure Detection and Analysis with a High-resolution and Low-cost Smart Insole

“…The hardware development of wireless, pressure-measuring insoles was detailed by Tan et al [1]. In this study, we used the same construction except that no Bluetooth module was attached and thus a wired version of the insoles was utilized.…”

“…In this study, we used the same construction except that no Bluetooth module was attached and thus a wired version of the insoles was utilized. In the study by Tan et al [1], Rmat3a was the piezoresistive material of choice and this material was used in the present study as well. The insoles were secured on a Kistler force plate with the x-and y-axes of the insoles aligned with the axes of the force plate.…”

Accuracy of Centre of Pressure Gait Measurements from Two Pressure-Sensitive Insoles

“…In this study we focused on comparing gait parameters of the PE to a newly-developed innovative SI. The SI is an inshoe plantar measuring system developed by Tan et al with recently published papers [10,11]. The study aims to investigate the COP accuracy of the PE and SI systems during gait, using a FP, by means of COP data noise (R 2 ), and the gradient of the fit function (k).…”

Instrumented Wireless SmartInsole System for Mobile Gait Analysis: A Validation Pilot Study with Tekscan Strideway

“…In addition, based on previous research, the proposed SmartInsoles cyber-physical system was constructed to have the optimal number of sensors for sensitivity to gait parameters without unnecessarily increasing cost. Further, although many of the fabricated systems are wireless, this was one of the few systems that used WiFi for real-time viewing of data from multiple devices simultaneously rather than Bluetooth [15] or integrated internal storage [20,37].…”

“…Results showed high agreement and correlation between the two systems. Tan et al, on the other hand, developed an insole with piezoelectric transducers to measure and analyze gait and discussed the need for a low-cost wireless solution for that purpose [15,16]. They focused on plantar pressure calculation using the designed low-cost system and compared their results with the Kistler Force Plate.…”