Systems and methods are provided for estimating a walking speed of a subject. A method comprises mounting an inertial measurement unit (IMU) on a wrist of the subject, the IMU configured to generate acceleration and rate of turn signals; processing the acceleration and rate of turn signals from the IMU to generate a pitch angle and a roll angle; processing the pitch angle and the roll angle to generate a rotation matrix from a sensor frame of the IMU to a navigation frame of the subject; applying the rotation matrix to the acceleration signals and removing gravitational acceleration to generate an external acceleration signal; processing the external acceleration signal to determine a principal horizontal axis and to generate a principal component acceleration signal representing external acceleration along the principal horizontal axis; and processing the principal component acceleration signal using a regression-based method to determine an estimated walking speed of the subject.