Prediction of Minimum Toe Clearance with a Radial Basis Function Network at the Start of the Swing Phase

Prediction of minimum toe clearance (MTC) during walking can decrease the risk of tripping. In this paper, we proposed a novel MTC prediction method using a radial basis function network. Input data were the angles, angular velocities, and angular accelerations of the hip, knee, and ankle joints in the sagittal plane at the start of the swing phase. In experiments, five subjects walked on a treadmill for 360 s. The radial basis function network was trained with 60 s of gait data and tested with the remaining 300 s of gait data. The root mean square error between the true and predicted MTC values was lower than 2.79 mm in all subjects.