Optically Instrumented Insole for Gait Plantar and Shear Force Monitoring

In this work, a fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) based sensing insole, capable of simultaneously measure plantar force (PF) and shear (SF) is proposed. The insole has four measuring points, strategically located for full gait analysis. Each point contains sensor-cell which consists in polylactic acid (PLA) structure, covered by an epoxy resin layer, crossed one optical with two FBGs, FBG1 FBG2, respectively. Due to the specific design system, sensitive both forces (with higher sensitivity PF), while FBG2 designed detect only SF. instrumented was tested during static exercises, results, obtained PF SF monitoring, were according those theoretically expected.