Development of Precession Instrumentation System for Differentiate Walking from Running in Race Walking by Using Piezoelectric Sensor

In this paper, a precession instrumentation system for measurement and characterization of human foot stress has been developed. The system is very useful to differentiate walking from running in race walking sport, by identification of the foot loss of contact with the ground. The system was developed in two main units: sensing unit (RTU) and signal processing unit (MTU). The RTU consist of piezoelectric stress sensor module and data acquisition module. The data acquisition is developed based on microcontroller to achieve the system as small as possible, but powerful. The MTU consist of computer system and several program procedures to identify the foot stress signals and to differentiate walking from running. Data communication between RTU and MTU can be conducted through wires by using RS485 protocol, or wirelessly by adding a pair of radio transceiver device. The system can be operated by online and real time. Result of the experiments show that the developed system has good performance. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]