Biomechanical application: exploitation of kinect sensor for gait analysis

Human gait recognition is an important indicator and are extensively studied research area especially with the aging population and rehabilitation applications. Application of gait analysis ranges from diagnosis, monitoring and early detection of potential hazards such as human fall. There are various types of approaches used in gait analysis including wearable, ambient and vision based devices. Microsoft Kinect sensor is well-known among researchers since it can give depth and normal colour images as well. This paper presents a preliminary study on gait analysis of lower body parts. The measurement taken includes step width, step lengths, stride lengths and angles of knee respective hip and ankle while walking. The results showed that the algorithms implemented were able to accurately measure the lengths with low error rate.