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Handbook of Human Motion pp 221–244Cite as

Three-Dimensional Human Kinematic Estimation Using Magneto-Inertial Measurement Units

Abstract

This chapter deals with the estimation of human kinematics using magneto and inertial sensing technology. A magneto-inertial measurement unit typically embeds a triaxial gyroscope, a triaxial accelerometer, and a triaxial magnetic sensor in the same assembly. By combining the information provided by each sensor within a sensor fusion framework, it is possible to determine the unit orientation with respect to a common global coordinate system. Recent advances in the construction of microelectromechanical system devices have made possible the manufacturing of small and light devices. These advances have widened the range of possible applications to include areas such as human movement. This chapter aims at providing the reader with a picture of the state of the art in the measurement and estimation methods for the description of human joint kinematics using magneto-inertial sensing technology. In the first section, fundamental concepts of rigid body kinematics are introduced with special reference to magneto-inertial measurements. Then a short description of the operational characteristics of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers is provided. The third section reports theory and methods for the estimation of the orientation and position of magneto-inertial measurement units along with the implementation of a Kalman filter for 3D orientation estimate as an example. In the last section, a critical review of the most common methodologies for the joint kinematic estimation is reported.

Keywords

  • Joint mechanics
  • Acceleration
  • Angular velocity
  • Orientation
  • Position
  • Multi-segmental model
  • Multibody
  • Anatomical coordinate system
  • Joint kinematics
  • Wearable sensors
  • Kalman filter
  • Pose

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Abbreviations

ALI:

Anatomical landmark identification

ARW:

Angle Random Walk

ACS:

Anatomical coordinate system

BCS:

Body-fixed coordinate system

CoR:

Center of rotation

CS:

Coordinate system

DoFs:

Degree of freedom

EKF:

Extended Kalman filter

FUN:

Functional

KF:

Kalman filter

GCS:

Global coordinate system

IMU:

Inertial measurement unit

MCS:

MIMU coordinate system

MEMS:

Microelectromechanical systems

(M)IMU:

(Magneto)-inertial measurement unit

MUL:

Manual Unit Alignment

NEMS:

Nano-electromechanical systems

VRW:

Velocity Random Walk

〈⋅, ⋅〉:

Dot product between vectors

⊗:

Quaternion multiplication

[q×]:

Skew-symmetric operator

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department POLCOMING, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy

    Andrea Cereatti & Ugo Della Croce

  2. Interuniversity Centre of Bioengineering of the Human Neuromusculoskeletal System, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy

    Andrea Cereatti & Ugo Della Croce

  3. Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Andrea Cereatti

  4. The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

    Angelo M. Sabatini

Authors
  1. Andrea Cereatti
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  2. Ugo Della Croce
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  3. Angelo M. Sabatini
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Correspondence to Andrea Cereatti .

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Cereatti, A., Della Croce, U., Sabatini, A.M. (2018). Three-Dimensional Human Kinematic Estimation Using Magneto-Inertial Measurement Units. In: Handbook of Human Motion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14418-4_162

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