Winner of the Competition “Prize for PhD thesis on Disability 2018”
How is a specific motor activity being performed? This question is the rationale of the human motion analysis, a general term regarding the automatic description and understanding of human movements. The technology supporting the analysis of human motion has advanced dramatically in the last decades, permitting to capture data rapidly, accurately and efficiently. From this perspective, movement analysis can be a useful tool in several research fields; specifically, applications in clinics and sports will be discussed in the following chapters. The main objective of this book is to propose novel protocols, algorithms, post processing procedures or indices to enhance the potential of human motion analysis performed with robotic devices or wearable sensors in rehabilitation robotics, clinics and sports. The book is divided in two main parts, the first one concerning the robotic devices and the second one focused on the wearable sensors. In particular, novel procedure to assess the spasticity severity in children with Cerebral Palsy by using a mechatronic robot for the ankle joint, the evaluation of the effectiveness of a laboratory-made active orthosis for knee and ankle rehabilitation using specific kinematic and spatio-temporal indices, as well as novel algorithm for performing automatic gait partitioning and activity recognition in real-time will be discussed.
