Abstract
Gait analyses of patients' with disabilities are usually conducted to examine their rehabilitating conditions. However, many patients rely on cane assistance to walk and most of the gait analysis systems are not capable of handiling such conditions. This is because special problems existed when both the cane and foot bore weight on the forceplate. Due to multiple sources of forces acting on a forcemeasuring device, the forces became not resolvable and caused indeterminacy problems. The purpose of this study was to developn a technique to solved possible indeterminacy problems of gait resulted from cane assistance. In this study, indeterminacy problems are resolved by integrating a three-forceplate kinetic system, a six-camera motion system, and an instrumented cane. A Matlab-based program was developed to analyze collected kinetic and kinematic information and to provide gait parameters. The completed system was validated by testing cane-assisted gait of 9 stroke patients. Validation of the completed system shows that system is cpable of handling possible indeterminacy problems of all tested patients.