Human movements are physical processes combining the classical mechanics of the human body moving in space and the biomechanics of the muscles generating the forces acting on the body under sophisticated sensory-motor control. One way to characterize movement performance is through measures of energy efficiency that relate the mechanical energy of the body and metabolic energy expended by the m...

In many simple walking models, foot placement dictates the center of pressure location and ground reaction force components, whereas humans can modulate these aspects after foot contact. Because of the differences, it is unclear to what extent predictions made by models are valid for human walking. Yet, both model simulations and human experimental data have previously indicated that the center...

In this paper a human-based control strategy is proposed for walking of humanoid robots. Its basic idea lies in the control of the CoM as well as the relative position of robot’s feet. Through the proposed study, it is shown that this reduced set of data allows to fully describe and reproduce a whole body human-like walking. In addition of reducing the number of controlled variables, the propos...

Swing-leg retraction, the backward rotation of the swing leg just prior to ground contact, is observed in human locomotion. While several advantages of swingleg retraction, like gait stability and perturbation rejection, are shown by conceptual models, there is currently very little experimental data on swing-leg retraction in human motion. In this paper, kinematic data for twenty-eight subject...

Most walking assist systems reported are not ready for using in real-world environment; where there are frequent perturbations .Our ultimate goal is to realize artificial reflexes to real-world walking support systems. This goal needs both qualitative and quantitative understanding of human reflexive mechanism. In this study we built a human walking simulator consisting of a Central Pattern Gen...