Plantar Pressure Detection with Fiber Bragg Gratings Sensing System

In this paper, a novel fiber-optic sensing system based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) to measure foot plantar pressure is proposed. This study first explores the Pedar-X insole foot pressure types of the adult-size chart and then defines six measurement areas to effectively identify four foot types: neutral foot, cavus foot, supinated foot and flat foot. The plantar pressure signals are detected by only six FBGs, which are embedded in silicone rubber. The performance of the fiber optic sensing is examined and compared with a digital pressure plate of i-Step P1000 with 1024 barometric sensors. In the experiment, there are 11 participants with different foot types to participate in the test. The Pearson correlation coefficient, which is determined from the measured results of the homemade fiber-optic plantar pressure system and i-Step P1000 plantar pressure plate, reaches up to 0.671 (p < 0.01). According to the measured results from the plantar pressure data, the proposed fiber optic sensing system can successfully identify the four different foot types. Measurements of this study have demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed system so that it can be an alternative for plantar pressure detection systems.