Cheng Tsu-Jui, Kenney Laurence, Amor James David, Thies Sibylle Brunhilde, Costamagna Eleonora, James Christopher, Holloway Catherine
Centre for Health Sciences Research , University of Salford , Salford M6 6PU , UK.
Warwick Engineering in Biomedicine, School of Engineering , University of Warwick , Coventry CV4 7AL , UK.
Healthc Technol Lett. 2016 Nov 2;3(4):303-309. doi: 10.1049/htl.2016.0061. eCollection 2016 Dec.
The use of walking aids is prevalent among older people and people with mobility impairment. Rollators are designed to support outdoor mobility and require the user to negotiate curbs and slopes in the urban environment. Despite the prevalence of rollators, analysis of their use outside of controlled environments has received relatively little attention. This Letter reports on an initial study to characterise rollator movement. An inertial measurement unit (IMU) was used to measure the motion of the rollator and analytical approaches were developed to extract features characterising the rollator movement, properties of the surface and push events. The analytics were tested in two situations: first, a healthy participant used a rollator in a laboratory using a motion capture system to obtain ground truth. Second, the IMU was used to measure the movement of a rollator being used by a user with multiple sclerosis on a flat surface, cross-slope, up and down slopes and up and down a step. The results showed that surface inclination and distance travelled measured by the IMU have close approximation to the results from ground truth; therefore, demonstrating the potential for IMU-derived metrics to characterise rollator movement and user's pushing style in the outdoor environment.
助行器在老年人和行动不便者中使用很普遍。滚动助行器旨在辅助户外出行，使用者需要在城市环境中通过路缘和斜坡。尽管滚动助行器使用广泛，但对其在非受控环境下使用情况的分析却相对较少受到关注。本信函报告了一项旨在描述滚动助行器运动特征的初步研究。使用惯性测量单元（IMU）来测量滚动助行器的运动，并开发了分析方法以提取表征滚动助行器运动、路面特性和推动事件的特征。这些分析方法在两种情况下进行了测试：首先，一名健康参与者在实验室中使用滚动助行器，并借助动作捕捉系统获取地面实况数据。其次，使用IMU测量一名多发性硬化症患者在平坦路面、横向斜坡、上下斜坡以及上下台阶时使用滚动助行器的运动情况。结果表明，IMU测量的路面倾斜度和行进距离与地面实况数据的结果非常接近；因此，证明了基于IMU得出的指标在表征户外环境中滚动助行器运动和使用者推动方式方面的潜力。
