Research on the Mechatronic Gait Monitoring System with Nordic Walking Poles

Gait with Nordic Walking poles (NW) is used in the rehabilitation process of patients with different diseases and disfunctions. In a typical rehabilitation process, the patient during gait is supervised by a trainer or physiotherapist who assesses the correctness of the patient's limb movements. In the work, the fundamentals of the design and operation of the mechatronic gait monitoring system with Nordic Walking poles were presented. The monitoring system provides the possibility for a trainer to analyse the gait of many patients online. The developed system consists of mechatronic NW poles equipped with a measuring system, which makes it possible to measure the kinematics and dynamics of poles. It is placed in a mobile device (smartphone or tablet) and connected wirelessly with a system for monitoring, analyzing and diagnosing patient movement. The monitoring system is also equipped with a self-diagnosis module, which signals any patient with basic errors and irregularities in their NW gait. The paper describes pilot tests of the NW gait monitoring system and presents the obtained gait results in the terrain, which verify the correctness of the system operation.