How humans walk: bout duration, steps per bout, and rest duration.

Much is known about human walking, but it is not known how walking is used during typical activities. Since improving walking ability is a key goal in many surgical, pharmacological, and physiotherapeutic interventions, understanding typical community mobility demands regarding the length of walking bouts, the number of sequential steps frequently performed, and the duration of common nonwalking (rest) behavior seems prudent. This study documents the gait of daily living in 10 nondisabled employed adults to define walking bout duration, sequential step counts, and length of rest periods over a 2-week period.

Ground reaction forces and impulses during a transient turning maneuver.

Understanding the kinetic strategies of turning as expressed in ground reaction forces (GRFs) and impulses (GRIs) is necessary to design therapies and technologies to enable patients with ambulatory difficulties perform daily activities. Previous studies have reported data only for one step of the turn and expressed the data in terms of a global reference frame making it difficult to understand how the forces act on the body to cause a change in heading and orientation during a turn. This study is the first to report GRF and GRI data for three steps of a turn and express that data in terms of a body reference frame.

Kinetic mechanisms to alter walking speed.

A mechanism to modulate speed during human walking has not yet been proposed in the literature, even though changing walking speed is likely a necessary attribute of everyday ambulation. To understand how joint kinetics modulate walking speed 12 normal adults walked Fast (1.4m/s), Slow (1.

Video task analysis of turning during activities of daily living.

Nearly every daily activity that requires locomotion requires turning, yet most gait research has focused on straight ahead walking. Research on turning has primarily been limited to laboratory or clinical settings, and little is known about turning in the home or community environments. The purpose of this study was to investigate turning behavior in the field during certain activities of daily living.