BACKGROUND Standing balance deficits are common in individuals after stroke. One way to address these deficits is to provide the individual with feedback from a force platform while balance activities are performed. The feedback can take visual and/or auditory form. OBJECTIVES To determine if visual or auditory force platform feedback improves the clinical and force platform standing balance ...

This pilot study investigated the potential of using trunk acceleration feedback control of center of pressure (COP) against postural disturbances with a standing neuroprosthesis following paralysis. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) were trained to use three-dimensional trunk acceleration as input to predict changes in COP for able-bodied subjects undergoing perturbations during bipedal stance...

To compensate for significant time delays in the control of human bipedal stance, it was suggested that a feed-forward control mechanism is needed to generate a preceding motor command to the body sway position observed in quiet standing. In this article, we present evidence that a feedback proportional-derivative (PD) controller can effectively generate a desired preceding motor command. We al...

Humans show remarkable skills in reactive balancing control on unknown disturbances while standing and walking.Though current bipedal robots can walk, run and step obstacles, they normally perform in a well-controlled environment. Still unexpected perturbations can cause a fall of bipedal robots, therefore advanced capabilities for rejecting unknown disturbances are needed. Studies from neurolo...

Stabilogram-diffusion analysis was used to gain insights into how idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) affects the postural control mechanisms involved in maintaining erect stance. Twenty-two subjects with IPD and twenty-four healthy elderly subjects were studied under eyes-open, quiet-standing conditions. The postural control mechanisms in the parkinsonian subjects, compared to the healthy eld...

Standing ride type vehicles like electric skateboards have been developed in recent years. Although these vehicles have advantages as being compact and low cost due to their simple structure, it is necessary to improve the riding quality. Therefore, the system aiding riders to keep their balance on a skateboard by feedback control or feedforward control has been required. To achieve it, a human...

Several studies have investigated postural control in anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) deficient patients; yet the contribution of cognitive processing (attention) in the postural control of these patients is still unclear. A dual-task design was used to determine the effects of a concurrent digit span memory task on standing balance in a group of ACL patients (n=27) compared with a group of ma...

Human postural sway, as measured by fluctuations of the center of pressure (COP) under the feet of a quietly standing individual, can be characterized as a stochastic process. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT) provides a linear relationship between the fluctuations of a quasi-static, stochastic system to the same system's relaxation to equilibrium following a perturbation. We applied a ...