MANA: Designing and Validating a User-Centered Mobility Analysis System

In this paper, we demonstrate a new IMU-based wearable system (dubbed MANA or Mobility ANAlytics) for measuring gait in a clinical setting. The design process and choices that were made to ensure that the technology was invisible and accessible are described. We collect a rich and diverse dataset of walking data from sixty participants, including forty people with Parkinson's Disease (PD). The system is then validated in a clinical setting with this dataset. We present novel and innovative algorithms to measure common gait parameters. The system is able to estimate these gait parameters with high accuracy, with a mean absolute error of 4.0 cm for stride length and 2.6 cm for step length, outperforming all state-of-the-art methods that included data from people with PD.