Angle measurement stability and cycle counting accuracy of hours-long duration IMU based arm motion tracking with...

Inertial measurement units are increasing used for monitoring joint motion, but there is a need to demonstrate their suitability during hours-long continuous use, as well as a need for validated methods to count arm cycles and provide descriptions of typical cycles.

Do IMU sensors and rainflow counting have sufficient accuracy for tracking and cycle counting of hours-long continuous arm motion? If so, what are the cycle rates of normal arm ADL and is there a representative cycle that can serve as a 'gait cycle' for the arm?

IMU sensors continuously tracked a robot performing 8 h of simulated cyclic arm motion. Error in the angle measurements was regressed against time to determine the rate of error and the total accumulated error. Additionally, the cycle count accuracy of rainflow, peak/valley, and Fourier transform counting methods was evaluated.

Over 8 h the IMU measurements accumulated a maximum 0.473° of error and the rainflow method counted cycles with less than 1% error. Applying rainflow counting to normal shoulder ADL resulted in an average rate of 533 elevation cycles per day.Tabulating the ADL cycles by mean and range values into a matrix and calculating the centroid, the single best values representing arm elevation cycles were a mean of 22.4° and a range of 21.6°.

IMU sensors can track arm motion for 8 h with little increase in error, though during longer durations error may reach unacceptable levels. For normal arm ADL, the rainflow determined count of arm elevation full-cycles differed from previous estimates based on peak/valley counting. From the rainflow counting, a single cycle representation of cycle mean and range was determined that can be used as a 'gait cycle' for the shoulder.