Skyler Rajasingham

Project Details

Cerebral palsy, a central nervous system disorder, is considered to be the most common cause of motor disability in children. In those with spastic cerebral palsy, equinus (aka toe-walking) is the most common deformity. This deformity can be treated through surgery where ankle-foot orthoses are used as part of postoperative rehabilitation in order to prevent the recurrence of equinus gait. As a result, the treatment plan for cerebral palsy patients requires continuous care and routine follow-ups with a clinician.

To improve quality of care for these patients, myself and two other students designed an orthotic remote gait lab that is put into the patients shoe and is capable of remote gait monitoring and measuring and storing key clinical outcomes related to the patients gait. This gives clincians important insight into their patients daily walking habits while also being cheap and effortless to use. The device features different sensors (BNO055 orientation sensor, FSR) and a microcontroller (ESP32) which collects, processes, and visualizes the number of steps, distance walked, range of motion of ankle joint, and percentage of gait cycle spent in stance phase vs swing phase each day.