Bridging Structural Dynamics and Biomechanics: Human Motion Estimation through Footstep-Induced Floor Vibrations

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Dong, Yiwen, Rose, Jessica, Noh, Hae Young
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Dong, Yiwen
Rose, Jessica
Noh, Hae Young
author_facet Dong, Yiwen
Rose, Jessica
Noh, Hae Young
contents Quantitative estimation of human joint motion in daily living spaces is essential for early detection and rehabilitation tracking of neuromusculoskeletal disorders (e.g., Parkinson's) and mitigating trip and fall risks for older adults. Existing approaches involve monitoring devices such as cameras, wearables, and pressure mats, but have operational constraints such as direct line-of-sight, carrying devices, and dense deployment. To overcome these limitations, we leverage gait-induced floor vibration to estimate lower-limb joint motion (e.g., ankle, knee, and hip flexion angles), allowing non-intrusive and contactless gait health monitoring in people's living spaces. To overcome the high uncertainty in lower-limb movement given the limited information provided by the gait-induced floor vibrations, we formulate a physics-informed graph to integrate domain knowledge of gait biomechanics and structural dynamics into the model. Specifically, different types of nodes represent heterogeneous information from joint motions and floor vibrations; Their connecting edges represent the physiological relationships between joints and forces governed by gait biomechanics, as well as the relationships between forces and floor responses governed by the structural dynamics. As a result, our model poses physical constraints to reduce uncertainty while allowing information sharing between the body and the floor to make more accurate predictions. We evaluate our approach with 20 participants through a real-world walking experiment. We achieved an average of 3.7 degrees of mean absolute error in estimating 12 joint flexion angles (38% error reduction from baseline), which is comparable to the performance of cameras and wearables in current medical practices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_16455
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bridging Structural Dynamics and Biomechanics: Human Motion Estimation through Footstep-Induced Floor Vibrations
Dong, Yiwen
Rose, Jessica
Noh, Hae Young
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Signal Processing
Quantitative estimation of human joint motion in daily living spaces is essential for early detection and rehabilitation tracking of neuromusculoskeletal disorders (e.g., Parkinson's) and mitigating trip and fall risks for older adults. Existing approaches involve monitoring devices such as cameras, wearables, and pressure mats, but have operational constraints such as direct line-of-sight, carrying devices, and dense deployment. To overcome these limitations, we leverage gait-induced floor vibration to estimate lower-limb joint motion (e.g., ankle, knee, and hip flexion angles), allowing non-intrusive and contactless gait health monitoring in people's living spaces. To overcome the high uncertainty in lower-limb movement given the limited information provided by the gait-induced floor vibrations, we formulate a physics-informed graph to integrate domain knowledge of gait biomechanics and structural dynamics into the model. Specifically, different types of nodes represent heterogeneous information from joint motions and floor vibrations; Their connecting edges represent the physiological relationships between joints and forces governed by gait biomechanics, as well as the relationships between forces and floor responses governed by the structural dynamics. As a result, our model poses physical constraints to reduce uncertainty while allowing information sharing between the body and the floor to make more accurate predictions. We evaluate our approach with 20 participants through a real-world walking experiment. We achieved an average of 3.7 degrees of mean absolute error in estimating 12 joint flexion angles (38% error reduction from baseline), which is comparable to the performance of cameras and wearables in current medical practices.
title Bridging Structural Dynamics and Biomechanics: Human Motion Estimation through Footstep-Induced Floor Vibrations
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16455