Pendulum Analysis of an Integrated Accelerometer to assess its suitability to measure Dynamic Acceleration for Gait Applications

Advances in surface micro-machining technology have led to the production of miniature, inexpensive, integrated accelerometers suitable for use in human movement analysis. The objective of this paper was to assess the ability of the biaxial ADXL202 integrated accelerometer to measure dynamic acceleration for gait applications. Mounting the integrated accelerometer at the centre of oscillation of a custom-designed pendulum and subjected it to a known repeatable, varying acceleration signal similar to that experienced in gait. This allowed direct comparison of the predicted pendulum acceleration (derived from a goniometer) with the acceleration measured by the integrated accelerometer. The predicted pendulum acceleration and the acceleration measured by the integrated accelerometer matched to a high degree with errors of less than 2% for radial and 7% for tangential acceleration.