UK Researchers Develop Low-Cost Smart Insole System for Accurate 3D Ground Reaction Force Measurement

A group of UK researchers has developed an innovative method for accurately estimating three-dimensional ground reaction forces using a low-cost smart insole system combining advanced artificial intelligence techniques. This portable solution overcomes the limitations of traditional measurement platform devices in terms of cost and convenience, enabling accurate movement monitoring outside laboratory environments.

Traditional tools like force plates or treadmills are expensive, bulky, restricted to lab environments and may disrupt natural gait patterns, according to Dr. Dinghuang Zhang, one of the researchers behind the study. The team created an affordable and portable alternative that people could easily integrate into their daily lives, representing a major breakthrough for the force plate industry and a game-changer for healthcare, sports science, and rehabilitation.

The team developed the TG0 smart insole, which captures fine-grained movement information such as pressure distribution under different parts of the foot, while the built-in inertial measurement unit provides precise motion tracking. This combination makes it an exceptionally versatile data acquisition platform for supporting research and practical applications in healthcare, rehabilitation and sports science, as explained by Dr. Liucheng Guo, the project lead and CTO of TG0.

Leveraging the advanced TG0 Smart Insole with an innovative artificial intelligence method, their approach demonstrated extremely high accuracy with an error rate as low as 4.16%. Earlier methods, such as motion sensors or pressure insoles, typically had error rates ranging from 8% to 20%, making the new system dramatically superior in performance while remaining affordable for real-world movement monitoring scenarios.

The research team also created a publicly available dataset that combines sensor data from insoles with gold standard force plate readings, available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ish.2024.12.005. This dataset is the first of its kind to include multi-modal sensor data from smart insoles with force plate readings and could accelerate research in biomechanics and wearable technologies. The work was supported by Innovate UK via Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP: 13863) and represents a significant advancement in making advanced motion analysis available to everyone, anywhere.