A Novel Smart Shoe Instrumented with Sensors for Quantifying Foot Placement and Clearance during Stair Negotiation

Ram, M, Baltzopoulos, V, Shaw, A, Maganaris, CN, Cullen, J, O'Brien, TD and Kot, P ORCID: 0000-0001-5526-7536 (2023) A Novel Smart Shoe Instrumented with Sensors for Quantifying Foot Placement and Clearance during Stair Negotiation. Sensors, 23 (24). ISSN 1424-8220

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Abstract

Trips and slips are significant causal perturbations leading to falls on stairs, especially in older people. The risk of a trip caused by a toe or heel catch on the step edge increases when clearance is small and variable between steps. The risk of a slip increases if the proportion of the foot area in contact with the step is reduced and variable between steps. To assess fall risk, these measurements are typically taken in a gait lab using motion-capture optoelectronic systems. The aim of this work was to develop a novel smart shoe equipped with sensors to measure foot placement and foot clearance on stairs in real homes. To validate the smart shoe as a tool for estimating stair fall risk, twenty-five older adults’ sensor-based measurements were compared against foot placement and clearance measurements taken in an experimental staircase in the lab using correlations and Bland–Altman agreement techniques. The results showed that there was a good agreement and a strong positive linear correlation for foot placement (r = 0.878, p < 0.000) and foot clearance (r = 0.967, p < 0.000) between sensor and motion analysis, offering promise for advancing the current prototype into a measurement tool for fall risk in real-life staircases.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0301 Analytical Chemistry; 0502 Environmental Science and Management; 0602 Ecology; 0805 Distributed Computing; 0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Analytical Chemistry
Subjects:	R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC1200 Sports Medicine T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering
Divisions:	Civil Engineering and Built Environment Sport and Exercise Sciences
Publisher:	MDPI
Date of acceptance:	20 November 2023
Date of first compliant Open Access:	8 December 2023
Date Deposited:	08 Dec 2023 13:09
Last Modified:	04 Jul 2025 15:30
DOI or ID number:	10.3390/s23249638
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/22041

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