We investigated the control and function of arm swing in human walking and running to test the hypothesis that the arms act as passive mass dampers powered by movement of the lower body, rather than being actively driven by the shoulder muscles. We measured locomotor cost, deltoid muscle activity and kinematics in 10 healthy adult subjects while walking and running on a treadmill in three exper...

Moving or static obstacles often get in the way while walking in daily life. Avoiding obstacles involves both perceptual processing of motion information and controlling appropriate defensive movements. Several higher-level motion areas, including the ventral intraparietal area (VIP), medial superior temporal area, parieto-insular vestibular cortex (PIVC), areas V6 and V6A, and cingulate sulcus...

An important consideration in the design of a practical system to restore walking in individuals with spinal cord injury is to minimize metabolic energy demand on the user. In this study, the effects of exoskeletal constraints on metabolic energy expenditure were evaluated in able-bodied volunteers to gain insight into the demands of walking with a hybrid neuroprosthesis after paralysis. The ex...

[Purpose] This study investigated the effects of walking with talus taping on the ankle dorsiflexion passive range of motion (DF PROM) in individuals with limited ankle DF PROM. [Subjects] Fifteen ankles with limited DF PROM were examined. [Methods] After rigid strapping tape was applied to the ankles from the talus to the calcaneus, progressing posteriorly and inferiorly, the subjects walked o...

Biomechanical studies of human walking reveal that compliance plays an important role at least in natural and smooth motions as well as for self-stabilization. Inspired by this, we present here the development of a new lower leg segment of the dynamic biped robot “RunBot”. This new lower leg segment features a compliant ankle connected to a flat foot. It is mainly employed to realize robust sel...

The objective of this study is to obtain optimal cyclic gaits for a biped robot without actuated ankles. Two types of motion are studied: walking and running. For the walking, the gait is composed uniquely of successive single support phases and instantaneous double support phases that are modelled by passive impact equations. The legs swap their roles from one single support phase to the next ...

This paper is devoted to a stability study of a walking gait for a biped. The walking gait is periodic and it is composed of a single-support phase, a passive impact, and a double-support phase. The reference trajectories are described as a function of the shin orientation versus the ground of the stance leg. We use the Poincaré map to study the stability of the walking gait of the biped. We on...