School of Engineering, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NT, UK.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Apr 13;22(8):2969. doi: 10.3390/s22082969.
Forecasted gait trajectories of children could be used as feedforward input to control lower limb robotic devices, such as exoskeletons and actuated orthotic devices (e.g., Powered Ankle Foot Orthosis-PAFO). Several studies have forecasted healthy gait trajectories, but, to the best of our knowledge, none have forecasted gait trajectories of children with pathological gait yet. These exhibit higher inter- and intra-subject variability compared to typically developing gait of healthy subjects. Pathological trajectories represent the typical gait patterns that rehabilitative exoskeletons and actuated orthoses would target. In this study, we implemented two deep learning models, a Long-Term Short Memory (LSTM) and a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), to forecast hip, knee, and ankle trajectories in terms of corresponding Euler angles in the pitch, roll, and yaw form for children with neurological disorders, up to 200 ms in the future. The deep learning models implemented in our study are trained on data (available online) from children with neurological disorders collected by Gillette Children's Speciality Healthcare over the years 1994-2017. The children's ages range from 4 to 19 years old and the majority of them had cerebral palsy (73%), while the rest were a combination of neurological, developmental, orthopaedic, and genetic disorders (27%). Data were recorded with a motion capture system (VICON) with a sampling frequency of 120 Hz while walking for 15 m. We investigated a total of 35 combinations of input and output time-frames, with window sizes for input vectors ranging from 50-1000 ms, and output vectors from 8.33-200 ms. Results show that LSTMs outperform CNNs, and the gap in performance becomes greater the larger the input and output window sizes are. The maximum difference between the Mean Absolute Errors (MAEs) of the CNN and LSTM networks was 0.91 degrees. Results also show that the input size has no significant influence on mean prediction errors when the output window is 50 ms or smaller. For output window sizes greater than 50 ms, the larger the input window, the lower the error. Overall, we obtained MAEs ranging from 0.095-2.531 degrees for the LSTM network, and from 0.129-2.840 degrees for the CNN. This study establishes the feasibility of forecasting pathological gait trajectories of children which could be integrated with exoskeleton control systems and experimentally explores the characteristics of such intelligent systems under varying input and output window time-frames.
可以将预测的儿童步态轨迹用作控制下肢机器人设备(如外骨骼和驱动矫形器)的前馈输入,例如动力踝足矫形器(PAFO)。已有多项研究对健康步态轨迹进行了预测,但据我们所知,尚无研究对存在病理步态的儿童的步态轨迹进行预测。与健康受试者的典型发育步态相比,这些轨迹表现出更高的个体内和个体间可变性。病理轨迹代表康复外骨骼和驱动矫形器的典型步态模式。在这项研究中,我们实现了两种深度学习模型,即长短期记忆(LSTM)和卷积神经网络(CNN),以在俯仰、滚转和偏航形式的相应欧拉角的角度上对患有神经障碍的儿童的髋部、膝部和踝部轨迹进行预测,预测范围可达未来 200 毫秒。我们研究中实现的深度学习模型是基于吉列儿童专科医院(Gillette Children's Speciality Healthcare)多年来收集的患有神经障碍的儿童数据(在线提供)进行训练的,这些数据的采集时间为 1994 年至 2017 年。儿童年龄在 4 至 19 岁之间,其中大多数患有脑瘫(73%),其余的则患有神经、发育、骨科和遗传障碍(27%)。数据是通过采样频率为 120 Hz 的运动捕捉系统(VICON)记录的,在行走 15 米的过程中进行记录。我们总共研究了 35 种输入和输出时间框架的组合,输入向量的窗口大小范围为 50-1000 毫秒,输出向量的窗口大小范围为 8.33-200 毫秒。结果表明,LSTM 优于 CNN,并且随着输入和输出窗口尺寸的增大,性能差距也越来越大。CNN 和 LSTM 网络的平均绝对误差(MAE)之间的最大差异为 0.91 度。结果还表明,当输出窗口为 50 毫秒或更小时,输入大小对平均预测误差没有显著影响。当输出窗口大于 50 毫秒时,输入窗口越大,误差越低。总体而言,我们为 LSTM 网络获得了 0.095-2.531 度的 MAE,为 CNN 获得了 0.129-2.840 度的 MAE。这项研究确立了预测儿童病理步态轨迹的可行性,这些轨迹可与外骨骼控制系统集成,并通过实验探索了不同输入和输出窗口时间框架下此类智能系统的特性。