The Agreement between Wearable Sensors and Force Plates for the Analysis of Stride Time Variability

The variability and regularity of stride time may help identify individuals at a greater risk of injury during military load carriage. Wearable sensors could provide a cost-effective, portable solution for recording these measures, but establishing their validity is necessary. This study aimed to determine the agreement of several measures of stride time variability across five wearable sensors (Opal APDM, Vicon Blue Trident, Axivity, Plantiga, Xsens DOT) and force plates during military load carriage. Nineteen Australian Army trainee soldiers (age: 24.8 ± 5.3 years, height: 1.77 ± 0.09 m, body mass: 79.5 ± 15.2 kg, service: 1.7 ± 1.7 years) completed three 12-min walking trials on an instrumented treadmill at 5.5 km/h, carrying 23 kg of an external load. Simultaneously, 512 stride time intervals were identified from treadmill-embedded force plates and each sensor where linear (standard deviation and coefficient of variation) and non-linear (detrended fluctuation analysis and sample entropy) measures were obtained. Sensor and force plate agreement was evaluated using Pearson’s r and intraclass correlation coefficients. All sensors had at least moderate agreement (ICC > 0.5) and a strong positive correlation (r > 0.5). These results suggest wearable devices could be employed to quantify linear and non-linear measures of stride time variability during military load carriage.