2011 International Conference on Instrumentation, Communication, Information Technology and Biomedical Engineering 8-9 November 2011, Bandung, Indonesia

3D Kinematics of Human Walking Based on Segment Orientation

S. Mihradi, A. I. Henda, T. Dirgantara, A. I. Mahyuddin*
Faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia *Corresponding author: aim@ftmd.itb.ac.id
Abstract-Human walking analysis is instrumental in medical rehabilitation because it gives quantitative information of human body segment during walking. The present work is a part of research on the development of 3D gait analyzer system. The system consists of a program to process and display 3D kinematics parameter of human gait based on position and displacement of markers. Observational data is in the form of marker position as a function of time in x, y, z axis. This data is then processed to obtain somegait parameters. To achieve good results, the marker position data is initially smoothed to eliminate noises before further processing. The program developed in the present research could succesfully calculate some parameters of human gait such as spatio temporal parameters, linear kinematics and angular kinematics of joints. Keywords: 3D Kinematics, Human Body Model, Gait Analysis

parameters could be observed, there are certain gait pathologies where another plane (e.g., the frontal plane) would yield useful information [6]. Therefore, development of 3D gait analysis system is needed to obtain gait parameters in frontal and transverse planes. The present work is a part of research on development of 3D gait analyzer system. Acomputer program to process and display 3D kinematics parameter of human walking based on position and displacement of markers attached to some body segments is developed. Observational data in the form of marker position as a function of time in 3D space is obtained from the 3D optical motion-capture system. However, for the present analysis, dummy data is used instead, in order to check the reliability of the developed program by comparing kinematics parameters calculated by the program with the ones from literature. II. KINEMATICS MODEL To observe the kinematics of human walking, a model of human body should be constructed first. In this research, human body is modeled by 8 segments as shown in Fig. 1. This model is an improvement of a model introduced by Vaughan, where he divides the human body into 7 segments, where pelvis and HAT (Head Arm Trunk) is in one segment [6]. For the present model, pelvis and HAT is divided into 2 segments. Therefore, the 8 segments are right foot, right calf, right thigh, pelvis, HAT, left thigh, left calf, and left foot. In analyzing the kinematics of a system, reference axes is required. Reference axes provides the position and orientation of each segment. Fig. 2 illustrates the local reference system (LRS) and global reference system (GRS). The GRS has X-Y-Zaxes, and this axes are fixed for any given camera arrangement. The second referenceis LRS with x-y-z axes,where each of LRS is attached to one segment. The LRS is called anatomical axes and there are 8 anatomical axes to describe orientation of 8 segments [7].

I. INTRODUCTION Human movement analysis has long been studied and applied in various fields. The one that specifically studied the characteristics of human walking is called gait analysis. Human gait analysis is instrumental in medical rehabilitation because it gives quantative information of human body segment during walking. In general, human gait can be measured by direct measurement techniques and also imaging (optical) measurement techniques. The main problem in direct measurement techniques is subject has to carry many cables or other components that can affects walking motion [1]. Most of the problems encountered by direct measurement techniques can be overcame by imaging (optical) measurement techniques. Recently, the authors have developed an affordable system for 2D kinematics and dynamics analysis of human gait [2] by using a 25 fps home video recorder. The system is further improved to overcome the occlusion problem of markers [3] and has been successfully used to determine 2D gait parameters of Indonesian people as an effort to develop the first Indonesian gait database [4-5]. However, information obtained from 2D measurement, i.e. in sagittal plane is not as much as information obtained from 3D measurement. Although the sagittal plane is probably the most important one, where much of the movement

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2011 International Conference on Instrumentation, Communication, Information Technology and Biomedical Engineering 8-9 November 2011, Bandung, Indonesia

Fig.1. Human body model

Fig.3. Vaughan Kit Marker Set [2]

Fig.2. Reference axes system

III.

MARKER SYSTEM

The marker system described here referred to Vaughan Kit Marker Set, developed by Vaughan [6]. The set uses 15 markers attached to lower part of human body.Thepositions of markers are depicted in Fig 3. To check whether or not the dummy data that represent the markers position met the system of Vaughan Kit Marker Set, at first, those data is visualized by the developed program as skeleton display as depicted in Fig. 4. Red circles describe positions of markers and the blue ones describe approximate position of the joints. IV.
SMOOTHING PROCEDURE

Fig.4. Skeleton display based on marker position data

To obtain good results, at first the marker position data should be smoothed to eliminate noises. This step is necessary since calculation of second or third order parameters such velocity and accelaration is very sensitive to noises. If those data are

used directly in the kinematics analysis, the results will be highly inaccurate, as shown by dashed line in Fig. 5and6. In order to remove the noises, smoothing spline technique is adopted to the raw data [8]. By using the smoothed data, then the foot velocities and accelerations are calculated as represented by solid lines in Fig. 5 and 6. To obtain the most appropriate smoothing parameter value, trial and error process is conducted until the obtained curve is close to the one in the literature. Literature used in the process is the velocity-accelaration curve of Vaughan [6]. The process is illustrated in Fig. 7. Curves on the left are calculation results obtained by varying the smoothing parameter value.The curve on the right is from literature.

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2011 International Conference on Instrumentation, Communication, Information Technology and Biomedical Engineering 8-9 November 2011, Bandung, Indonesia

Fig.5.Right foot velocity in x-y-z direction before (dashed line) and after (solid line) smoothing Fig.2. Smoothing parameter selection process

Fig.1. Right foot acceleration in x-y-z direction before (dashed line) and after (solid line) smoothing

V.

KINEMATIC ANALYSIS PROCEDURE

The procedure for kinematics calculations is described in the flowchart shown in Fig. 8. Based on the flowchart and the method described in [6], a computer program is developed by using MATLAB. The graphical user interface (GUI) is also constructed to help user to execute the program easily. The GUI is shown in Fig. 9. VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The program developed in the present workis used to calculate general gait /spatio temporal parameters (cycle time, cadence, stride length and speed), linear kinematics parameters and angular kinematics parameters. The obtained parameters are presented in the subsequent sub-chapters.

Fig.3. Flowchart of kinematics analysis.

Fig.4. Program developed in the presentwork.

A. Spatio Temporal

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2011 International Conference on Instrumentation, Communication, Information Technology and Biomedical Engineering 8-9 November 2011, Bandung, Indonesia

Since the distance, the time and the number of steps are all known from simulation, the kinematics gait parameters could be easily calculated using the following formula: 1. Cycle time (s) = time (s) 2/(steps counted) 2. Cadence (steps/min) = (steps counted) 60/time (s) 3. Stride length (m) = distance (m) 2/(steps counted) 4. Speed (m/s) = distance (m)/time (s) Table 1 shows several calculated spatio temporal parameters of the present data of human gait. Table 1. Several kinematics parameters Cadence (steps/min) 96 Cycle time (s) 1.25 Stride length (m) 1.3 Speed (m/s) 1.03
Fig.7. Right foot accelerations in x-y-z direction

B. Linear Kinematics At present, the program could calculate somelinear kinematics parameter such as joint/segment position, its velocity and linear acceleration. Fig. 10 shows right foot position versus time, while velocity and linear acceleration of the foot are depicted in Fig. 11 and 12.

C. Angular Kinematics Angular kinematics parameters obtained by the program are joint angles, angular velocities and accelarations. The results are shown in Figs. 13-17.

Fig.8. Joint angles of sagittal plane

Fig.5. Right foot position in x-y-z direction

Fig.9. Joint angles of transverse plane

Fig.6. Right foot velocities in x-y-z direction Fig.10 Joint angles of frontal plane

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[3] Ndaru Juliyad, Sandro Mihradi, Tatacipta Dirgantara, and Andi Isra Mahyuddin, "2D Observational Optical Motion System for Analysis of Human Gait," in Regional Conference on Mechanical and Aerospace Technology, Bali, 2010. A. I. Mahyuddin, S. Mihradi, T. Dirgantara, P.N. Maulido, "Gait Parameters Determination by 2D Optical Motion Analyzer System", Applied Mechanics and Materials, vol. 83, pp. 123-129, 2011. Prisanto Novapriya Maulido, "Penyusunan Basis Data Awal Karakteristik Gait Berjalan Normal Indonesia Menggunakan Sistem Analisis Gerak 2 Dimensi," Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, Tugas Sarjana 2011. Vaughan, C. L., Davis, B. L., OConnor, J. C. Dynamic of Human Gait, 2rd Edition, Kiboho Publishers, Cape Town, South Africa, 1999. Winter, D.A., Biomechanic and Motor Control of Human Movement, 2nd Edition, John Wiley and Son Inc., New York., 1990. Purba, U. M., Mihradi, S., Dirgantara, T., and Mahyuddin, A.I. An Inverse Dynamics of Human Walking Based on Experimental Motion Analysis, RCMAE, Bali, Indonesia, 2010.

[4] [5]

[6] [7] [8] Fig.11. Right calf angular velocities

Fig.12. Right calf angular accelarations

VII. CONCLUSIONS In the present research, a computer program to process and display 3D kinematics parameter of human walking based on position and displacement of markers attached to some body segments has been developed. The program could successfully calculate spatio temporal, linear and angular kinematics parameters of human walking. To ensure the reliability of the developed program, the results have been compared to some parameters obtained from the literature. The comparison showed that the developed program sufficiently accurate and feasible to use. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from Program Riset dan Inovasi KK ITB 2011 for the present project. REFERENCES
[1] [2] David A. Winter, Biomechanics and Motor Control of Human Movement, 4th ed. New Jersey: John Wiley and Son Inc., 2009. A. I. Mahyuddin, S. Mihradi, T. Dirgantara. A. Sukmajaya, N. Juliyad, U. Purba, Development of an Affordable System for 2D Kinematics and Dynamics Analysis of Human Gait, Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, Volume 7522, 2010, Article number 75222L.

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