Classifying Motion Intention of Step Length and Synchronous Walking Speed by Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

In some patients who have suffered an amputation or spinal cord injury, walking ability may be degraded or deteriorated. Helping these patients walk independently on their own initiative is of great significance. This paper proposes a method to identify subjects’ motion intention under different levels of step length and synchronous walking speed by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy technology. Thirty-one healthy subjects were recruited to walk under six given sets of gait parameters (small step with low/midspeed, midstep with low/mid/high speed, and large step with midspeed). The channels were subdivided into more regions. More frequency bands (6 subbands on average in the range of 0-0.18 Hz) were decomposed by applying the wavelet packet method. Further, a genetic algorithm and a library for support vector machine algorithm were applied for selecting typical feature vectors, which were represented by important regions with partial important channels mentioned above. The walking speed recognition rate was 71.21% in different step length states, and the step length recognition rate was 71.21% in different walking speed states. This study explores the method of identifying motion intention in two-dimensional multivariate states. It lays the foundation for controlling walking-assistance equipment adaptively based on cerebral hemoglobin information.