On the Role of Perception in Regulating Stride-to-stride Walking Dynamics

1. Motivation The Dynamic Walking community has rightly focused on the aspects of gait that can be modeled, predicted, and explained by the mechanics of multibody systems. Sensory feedback is assumed to play a role in walking, but generally via machine-like, relatively low-dimensional feedback control mechanisms in a virtually noise-free system. Human beings, however, are “perception-action” systems that perceive sensory inputs and organize motor responses in a variety of different ways, all while coping with fluctuations that are intrinsic to the decidedly high-dimensional human motor system. This suggests the need for a better understanding of the perceptual context in which locomotion occurs in order to fully understand how humans select and implement different control strategies to regulate walking.