Abstract—Running is a popular form of physical exercise. However, runners often experience a high number of running-related injuries. This is partially due to the fact that runners are lack of knowledge about their running postures during running. This paper describes a preliminary study of using an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) based wearable system for real-time biomechanical analysis during Running. This system consisted four IMU sensors. Two were strapped to the toes of a subject’s shoes and another two were attached to the subject’s medial and lateral ASIS. The foot and pelvis positions were estimated by the IMU acceleration and a linear regression model. The lower limb joint angles were estimated by combining these position information with a planar 3R serial chain and solving its inverse kinematics. The results show that joint angles of lower limbs (i.e. hip, knee and ankle angles) can be accurately estimated by this wearable system. This study can benefit the future research on conducting complete lower limbs kinematics analysis with minimal and unobtrusive wearable sensors and provide real-time feed back during running exercise.

Index Terms—biomechanics, running, wearable system, joint angles

Cite: Xinyao Hu, Zhonghao Huang, Jianxin Jiang, and Xingda Qu, "An Inertial Sensor Based System for Real-Time Biomechanical Analysis during Running," Journal of Medical and Bioengineering, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1-5, June 2017. doi: 10.18178/jomb.6.1.1-5