Ground Force Precision Calibration Method for Customized Piezoresistance Sensing Flexible Force Measurement Mat

Sensors (Basel). 2024 Apr 8;24(7):2363. doi: 10.3390/s24072363.

Abstract

A force plate is mainly used in biomechanics; it aims to measure the ground reaction force in a person's walking or standing position. In this study, a large-area force mat of the piezoresistance sensing type was developed, and a deep-learning-based weight measurement calibration method was applied to solve the problem in which measurements are not normalized because of physical limitations in hardware and signal processing. The test set was composed of the values measured at each point by weight and the value of the center of the pressure variable, and the measured value was predicted using a deep neural network (DNN) regression model. The calibration verification results show that the average weight errors range from a minimum of 0.06% to a maximum of 3.334%. This is simpler than the previous method, which directly measures the ratio of the resistance value to the measured weight of each sensor and derives an equation.

Keywords: calibration; center of pressure; deep neural network; force plate; piezoresistance sensor.