An example of what this gets used for are things like lameness detection or diagnosing disorders. Or it could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment.
While the pressure plate doesn't measure 3D forces, it does have the advantage of giving you information about the distribution, which I expect at least has strong correlations with 3D forces. Obviously you need animals of a certain size to get good data (or systems with very small sensors), so you wouldn't use it for gecko's or even really small dogs.
Perhaps I should try calculating the distance to the body's center of mass, to get an idea how well this distinguishes the different paws. The problem I'm having so far is that the quality of the measurements isn't always optimal and inferring which paws are making contact is difficult if you don't see paws from both sides (for quadrupeds at least).
I'll be sure to check out the research you pointed to!