Simplified measurement and visualization tool for crutch walk training

The authors have been developing a crutch walk training system. In this research, there are two fundamental schemes: one is measuring the motions of a patient and crutches, and the other is analyzing these motions. These schemes are expected to be utilized in practical rehabilitation works. In the proposed system, a gyroscope was embedded into a crutch, and the angular velocity of the crutch was measured by it. The measured angular velocities were integrated into tilt angles of the crutch. In this process, the removal of integration error is considered not to be a negligible task. For this task, multiple sensors were used in the previous research. Another task is having patients present walking motions in an easily viewable manner based on the integrated crutch´s tilt angle. A still image was presented to patients in the previous research. Therefore, to remove a complexity of multiple sensors and to introduce an intuitive presentation function instead of presenting a still image were required. In this paper, a simplified tool of measurement and visualization was proposed, and its usability was evaluated through experiment.