Smart insole tracks wearer’s movement

A solar-powered smart insole system that monitors how people walk could help users improve their posture and provide early warnings for conditions from plantar fasciitis to Parkinson’s disease. Constructed using 22 small pressure sensors, the system offers real-time health tracking. 

“Our bodies carry lots of useful information that we’re not even aware of,” says Jinghua Li, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at The Ohio State University. “These statuses also change over time, so it’s our goal to use electronics to extract and decode those signals to encourage better self-health care checks.”

Using an advanced machine learning model, the wearable can recognize eight different motion states, including sitting, standing, running and squatting. 

The research team anticipates several future enhancements, such as expanding the dataset to encompass diverse populations, as individual variations in gait and lifestyle profoundly affect sensor calibration and artificial intelligence predictive accuracy. 

Researchers expect the technology will be available commercially within the next three to five years. The study was published in Science Advances April 16.