Gait Analysis Project

The Project

For our gait analysis project we had to analyze different people's gait in order to predict something and tell them apart by the way they walk. We first started by answering several questions that made us think deeper about what we want to look for within this project. These questions include: What is a gait? Have you ever thought about the way you walk and run? Or noticed that the people you know have a distinct way of walking? What differences do you see? Can you recognize certain people by how they walk? How might differences in gaits help you identify people? What is noticeable about how those people move? Could you collect data on this and learn from it? What kind of data could you collect and how? What could you predict about the people by knowing how they walk only and nothing else? How could you use the problem-solving techniques detailed on the "problem-solving page" to tackle this problem? After answering these questions we decided we were going to correlate a person's stride length to their height. This worked very well because we had various group members of different heights. We then started on our data and developed our hypothesis of: Based on our data, we predict that the taller you are, the farther you will travel with your steps as your strides will be bigger. We also infer that the taller you are, the higher your acceleration will be.

Evidence of Work

Content

• Gait: the stride of a human as they move their limbs. Our study included the walking of 10 steps in order to see patterns and make correlations with the data.

• Gait Analysis: gait analysis is the systematic study of human motion, using visual observations and movement measurements for the purpose of helping people with conditions affecting their ability to walk. This was the central focus of the project

• Engineering analysis: the application of scientific and analytic principles to reveal the state and properties of a system and helps engineers begin to understand how and why systems behave the way they do.

• Acceleration: the rate of change of velocity. in this case, we used an app to measure acceleration and g-force and then used that data to compare the different gaits of our walking subjects.

• Accelerometer: a device that measures the physical acceleration experienced by an object and we used an accelerometer to measure g-force as a person walked.

• G-force: g-force is a measure of acceleration. It is the force of gravity or acceleration on a body.

• Predictive model: a model or formula that is able to accurately predict something based on the data and correlation found previously, models allow complex systems to be understood and their behavior predicted. We made predictive models based on the data we got from our four different subjects of various heights.

• Symmetry: in terms of gait analysis, the quantification of differences between left-foot and right-foot steps.

• Variability: in terms of gait analysis, the quantification of fluctuations from one stride to the next and we studied the variability in each subject's gait.

• Velocity: the speed of something that is moving in one direction. in this case, it was how quick our subjects walked during the 10 steps.

• Dynamicity: in terms of gait analysis, the quantification of variations in kinematic or kinetic parameters within a step.

Reflection

This project was definitely a tough one, maybe on of the hardest ones I had done so far in my STEM career. This project was very tough because we had to find a predictive model that fit with our correlation between stride length and height. This proved very difficult because our data may not have been completely accurate but we grinded it out and eventually finished. Throughout this project I believe that we as a group worked very well together and were always being effective and doing a certain part of the project. Within our group we are all very good friends and we know eachother really well and we knew going into this project that this may be a problem and lead to us getting off task but we stayed focused the majority of the time and were able to work effectively. One thing we could have improved on was asking for assistance when we did not understand something because we took time on some things where we were having trouble and we could have used some outside input in order to quicken our process. Other than that I believe we worked very hard and were able to get the project done, while understanding the meaning of what we did.