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.

A mechanical model of the human ankle in the transverse plane during straight walking: implications for prosthetic design.

In order to protect sensitive residual limb soft tissues, lower limb prostheses need to control torsional loads during gait. To assist with the design of a torsional prosthesis, this paper used simple mechanical elements to model the behavior of the human ankle in the transverse plane during straight walking. Motion capture data were collected from ten able-bodied subjects walking straight ahead at self-selected walking speeds.

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.

Mechanical behavior of the human ankle in the transverse plane while turning.

In order to better rehabilitate lower limb amputees, prosthetic technology needs to facilitate turning gait by providing torsional control in the transverse plane. This paper characterizes biological ankle function in the transverse plane during turning gait with simple mechanical elements to assist in the design of a biomimetic prosthetic ankle joint. Motion capture data was collected from ten subjects performing left and right turns through a 90 degrees hallway corner.

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.

Rotating horizontal ground reaction forces to the body path of progression.

When studying the biomechanics of a transient turn, the orientation of the body will change relative to the orientation of the force plates over the progression of the turn. To express ground reaction forces relative to the body, this study investigated possible origin locations and axis alignments of body reference frames. The gait patterns of 10 subjects were recorded as subjects negotiated a 90 degrees hallway corner.