Walking Motion Analysis Using Wii Remotes

WiiGait is not a political scandal, it’s a project that records motion data while walking. [Bilal Chishti] and [Zassa Kavuma] are strapping a Wii remote onto each leg and recording the sensor data while making video of the walker at the same time. The two are using an Ubuntu box to pull the sensor data from the Bluetooth-enabled devices and utilizing its built-in webcam for the video. They graph the data for each axis and we’re sure that syncing up data anomalies with the video is just a matter of matching timestamps.

So what good is this? The creators are keeping us in the dark about an end-goal for collected data; this may just be for the experience of using the hardware. But we could see it having uses in making distance runners more efficient, or teaching that bipedal robot how to balance.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXjwyM_XWys&w=470]

10 thoughts on “Walking Motion Analysis Using Wii Remotes

  1. Browse http://quantifiedself.com/ for other ways self-improvement is aided by innovation and expect more of this as health care costs are internalized. This morning I recorded my footsteps on crusty snow. Audacity’s beat finder can process the time between heal hits and give me ample assessment of the results of my therapy in correcting an insidious gait problem. Simpler than this system but there is much more data available with this Wii Sensor technique. An iPod App, iSensor allows x,y,z data, using WiFi, to be collected on a webserver. Smaller package, less programing, more available? TI Chronos watch can do the same data gathering.

  2. had similar idea for motion capturing only using wii motion plusses (and obviously it didnt work, because they all shared the same adress -_-), but i guess using the whole wiimote with motion plus and nunchuck, is better for movement analysis
    gotta buy a bunch of those cheap ass wiimotes from hama or bigben and fuck around with them

  3. Awesome application for looking at the motion of an elderly person, possibly with Parkinson’s Disease.

    And yes, the nunchuk all have the same I2C address but using 2 I2C buses or an I2C bus switch is a simple answer to that problem.

  4. Richlew wrote “Neurologists treating Parkinson’s responded: ‘The patient already owns the best sensor and processing rig possible'”

    Not my neurologists or therapists…

Leave a Reply to ReaperCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.