Walking on Uneven Terrain

Control of legged locomotion across uneven terrain is poorly understood from a theoretical perspective, despite strong relevance to clinical and robotic applications. Gait research has typically examined locomotion on smooth and level surfaces with uniform steps. Identifying key gait parameters that permit agile locomotion across uneven surfaces could lead to a clearer understanding of control in humans and animals. In this study, we examined young healthy subjects walking on an uneven terrain surface with the expectation that walking on uneven terrain would increase metabolic cost of walking relative to smooth terrain walking. We performed biomechanical analyses on the subjects to determine which factors likely contribute to changes in the metabolic cost of locomotion.