Gait Phase Detection in Walking and Stairs Using Machine Learning

Machine learning-based activity and gait phase recognition algorithms are used in powered motion assistive devices to inform control of motorized components. The objective of this study was to develop a supervised multiclass classifier to simultaneously detect activity and gait phase (stance, swing) in real-world walking, stair ascent, and stair descent using inertial measurement data from the thigh and shank. The intended use of this algorithm was for control of a motion assistive device local to the knee. Using data from 80 participants, two decision trees and five long short-term memory (LSTM) models that each used different feature sets were initially tested and evaluated using a novel performance metric: proportion of perfectly classified strides (PPCS). Based on the PPCS of these initial models, five additional posthoc LSTM models were tested. Separate models were developed to classify (i) both activity and gait phase simultaneously (one model predicting six states), and (ii) activity-specific models (three individual binary classifiers predicting stance/swing phases). The superior activity-specific model had an accuracy of 98.0% and PPCS of 55.7%. The superior six-phase model used filtered inertial measurement data as its features and a median filter on its predictions and had an accuracy of 92.1% and PPCS of 22.9%. Pooling stance and swing phases from all activities and treating this model as a binary classifier, this model had an accuracy of 97.1%, which may be acceptable for real-world lower limb exoskeleton control if only stance and swing gait phases must be detected. Keywords: machine learning, deep learning, inertial measurement unit, activity recognition, gait.