Our Project
In this project, my team of 4 were given the task of analyzing the way different people walk and to see if there was a way to find more information on a person based on how someone walked or ran. Our driving question was "how can we relate gait frequency to the height of a person." To do answer this question, we had held multiple trials of people walking and running and took that data. Two people were told to walk a distance of 10 steps and time and total distance was taken each trial. We also did a running trial where two people ran 5 steps and the distance and time was taken. The two people who took part in the experiment had their leg, arm, height, and foot length measured. The data was collected through an app that measured different distances based on how the phone moved. This app was called "“Physics Toolbox Accelerometer”. In order to accurately gather data from the app, we placed the phone on the subject's dominate leg because it would move with the walking movements. The data was transferred from the app into a spreadsheet where it was analyzed and graphed.
Down below is our report of all of our findings and data further explained. Under the report is the presentation of our predictive model.
Down below is our report of all of our findings and data further explained. Under the report is the presentation of our predictive model.
Concepts
- Accelerometer: a tool to measure the acceleration of an object's movements
- dynamicity: In terms of gait analysis, the quantification of variations in kinematic or kinetic parameters within a step
- gait: the stride of a human as they move their limbs
- metric: a quantitive indicator of a characteristic or attribute
- model: In technology, a description of observed or predicted behavior of some system, simplified by ignoring certain details. Models allow complex systems to be understood and their behavior predicted.
- symmetry: In terms of gait analysis, the quantification of differences between left-foot and right-foot steps.
- variability: In terms of gait analysis, the quantification of fluctuations from one stride to the next.
Reflections
During this project, we all learned many new things. Personally, a peak for me was that I learned how to use a spreadsheet and how to create graphs using them. I also learned new things about how people's height's can affect someone's gait. We all got the project done on time and worked very well with one another. One thing that we could improve on was not procrastinating the work until later. The first few days we started off pretty well with taking data and doing our trials but then slowed down as the days went by. Although we were able to finish everything on time, we were writing the report the night before it was due. We should have spread out the work over multiple days better. Another pit was that we had 1 or 2 other projects in the class going on at the same time so it was hard to focus on this project. We also had people who were not there during class a lot of the time so they would miss even more class time to work on the project. Overall, this project was not my favorite but I am glad we did it because I learned many new skills that I can use in the future.