Investigator: Terence Sim.
Stress on the knee — caused by various factors including injuries, aging, and overweight — is a major contributor to orthopedic disorders such as knee osteoarthritis (OA), a severe illness that can even lead to decreased ability to walk. One possible treatment for this problem is to have patients conduct gait modification, getting them to intentionally walk toe-in or toe-out, thereby reducing the stress on their knees. In this paper, we propose EarWalk, a novel solution that utilizes commodity wireless earables to provide constant and real-time feedback on the patients’ gait modification. EarWalk leverages the built-in accelerometer in earables to sense and ultimately differentiate normal, toe-in, and toe-out gait postures due to the minute differences in their vibrations. As a proof-of-concept, we evaluate EarWalk with real-world data by inviting participants to walk while wearing a pair of earables, and demonstrate an average accuracy of over 95% in identifying the gait postures.