Bincalar Alexander Dawid, Freeman Chris, Schraefel M C
School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, University Road, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
Sensors (Basel). 2025 Feb 20;25(5):1283. doi: 10.3390/s25051283.
The accurate measurement of human balance is required in numerous analysis and training applications. Force plates are frequently used but are too costly to be suitable for home-based systems such as balance training. A growing body of research and commercial products use Pressure-Sensitive Mats (PSMs) for balance measurement. Low-cost PSMs are constructed with a piezoresistive material and use copper tracks as conductors. However, these lack accuracy, as they often have a low resolution and suffer from noise, non-repeatable effects, and crosstalk. This paper proposes novel algorithms that enable the Centre of Pressure (CoP) to be computed using low-cost PSM designs with significantly higher accuracy than is currently achievable. A mathematical model of a general low-cost PSM was developed and used to select the design of the PSM (track width and placement) that maximises CoP accuracy. These yield new optimal PSM geometries that decrease the mean absolute CoP error from 17.37% to 5.47% for an 8 × 8 sensor layout. Then, knowledge of the footprint was used to further optimise accuracy, showing a decrease in absolute error from 17.37% to 3.93% for an 8 × 8 sensor layout. A third algorithm was derived using models of human movement to further reduce measurement error.
在众多分析和训练应用中，需要对人体平衡进行精确测量。测力板虽常用，但成本过高，不适用于如平衡训练这类家庭使用的系统。越来越多的研究和商业产品使用压敏垫（PSM）进行平衡测量。低成本的PSM由压阻材料制成，并使用铜轨作为导体。然而，这些PSM缺乏准确性，因为它们通常分辨率较低，且存在噪声、不可重复效应和串扰问题。本文提出了新颖的算法，能够使用低成本的PSM设计来计算压力中心（CoP），其精度比目前所能达到的显著更高。开发了一个通用低成本PSM的数学模型，并用于选择能使CoP精度最大化的PSM设计（轨道宽度和布局）。这些产生了新的最佳PSM几何形状，对于8×8传感器布局，将平均绝对CoP误差从17.37%降低到5.47%。然后，利用对覆盖面积的了解进一步优化精度，对于8×8传感器布局，绝对误差从17.37%降低到3.93%。使用人体运动模型推导了第三种算法，以进一步减少测量误差。
