Reliability of Graphene as a Bio Wearable Sensor For Gait Analysis

With more people falling every year it is more important to continue to track everyday activity as well as follow the progress that someone is making over time. As well as at risk subjects, athletes are also wanting to track their activity as well as improve in finer control of their motions and abilities. To improve someone’s balance, strength, flexibility, and more someone can now start to use different biological sensors to help live a healthier and better lifestyle. To build different sensors requires materials that are comfortable to wear and accurate in collecting data. Graphene has been considered a wonder material that is used in many different applications which allow circuits and devices to use the flexible and durable material to conduct electricity. This paper shows multiple different tests and 36 trials of using graphene as a device which measures pressure that can be used to analyze gait patterns. These tests involve walking on a dual force plate treadmill for 90 continuous seconds with the graphene strip in the heel of the shoe wirelessly transmitting data to be recorded. The initial tests show that graphene will pick up noise and that graphene can start to deteriorate without proper protection. When looking at subject 1 there is less than .01 seconds of error between the graphene circuit and the ground truth. The ground truth was collected simultaneously, and the t-tests and ANOVA tests showed that there is no statistical difference between the graphene system and the ground truth. These tests also showed a 96.7% reproducibility score. There are limitations as seen in the later subjects, but these limitations can be overcome by further protecting the graphene and replacing the strip when it starts to show signs of deterioration which will allow graphene to be used in everyday bio wearable devices.