Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to develop gait training system with real-time visual biofeedback and auditory biofeedback. Based on this developed system, the therapist will be able to remotely set up the appropriate gait trainings parameters for the trainees to improve their walking ability. The developed system can accurately analyze real-time gait variables without need of users calibration before training. Moreover, only one 8-bit microprocessor can be sufficiently utilized in this system for real-time gait assessment and overall biofeedback controls. In this study, the performance of the systematic gait analysis was investigated by comparison with the standard clinical instrument. The effectiveness of visual and auditory biofeedback for improving of gait training performance was also examined. The results show that the gait assessment error of this system is less than 2%, which is acceptable for clinical gait training. Thus, it was confirmed that this developed system can be effectively utilized for real-time gait assessment. Moreover, it was found that the biofeedback cueing can be used to improve the performance of gait training. The real-time visual biofeedback and auditory biofeedback allow the trainees to step closer to the target step length. However, since this study mainly examines the technical efficiency of the developed system, further studies should be performed to address the effectiveness of this gait training system for improving the gait performance of gait impairment subjects.