Shoe-type Wearable Device for Measuring Ground Reaction Force and Center of Pressure

Human upright bipedal walking is unique as a method of biological locomotion and has been studied in a very wide range of fields. Therefore, it is very valuable to measure the movement data of walking in terms of its contribution to various fields. In this study, ground reaction force (GRF) and center of pressure (CoP) are measured. The most common methods for measuring GRF and CoP are force plates and motion capture systems, but these are expensive and limited to the laboratory. Many wearable devices for measuring GRF and CoP have already been studied, but some of them use thick sensors, which may affect the response. Therefore, in this study, we use FSR (Force Sensing Resistors), which is thin and inexpensive. Many devices using FSR have already been studied, but they only attach FSR to the insole and cannot directly obtain information about the environment. In this study, we propose a wearable device in which FSRs are attached to both insoles and outsoles. Experimental results showed that a certain level of accuracy was achieved in straight-line walking.