Simple walking models, like the compass-gait model, have yielded useful insight into the basic mechanics of walking. A similar model serves as a template for brachiation. With the ability of a two-link robot to walk and swing, we explore the multi-locomotion capability of a generalized two-link model with potential footholds at any location. We focus on the connected components of passive gaits...

BACKGROUND Recent studies suggest that pincer nails are caused by lack of upward mechanical forces on the toe pad. However, clinically significant pincer nails are also often observed among healthy walkers. It was hypothesized that in these cases, the affected toes do not receive adequate physical stimulation from walking and loading. To test this, the gait characteristics of pincer nail cases ...

Food deprivation alters the processing of sensory information, increasing neural activity in the olfactory and gustatory systems in animals across phyla. Neural signaling is metabolically costly, and a hungry animal has limited energy reserves, so we hypothesized that neural activity in other systems may be downregulated by food deprivation. We investigated this hypothesis in the motion vision ...

Building trajectories for biped robot walking is a complex task considering all degrees of freedom (DOFs) commonly bound within the mechanical structure. A typical problem for such robots is the instability produced by violent transitions between walking phases in particular when a swinging leg impacts the surface. Although extensive research on novel efficient walking algorithms has been condu...

In this paper we propose an approach for the estimation of the slope of the walking surface during normal walking using a body-worn sensor composed of a biaxial accelerometer and a uniaxial gyroscope attached to the shank. It builds upon a state of the art technique that was successfully used to estimate the walking velocity from walking stride data, but did not work when used to estimate the s...

Changes in behavioral state modify neural activity in many systems. In some vertebrates such modulation has been observed and interpreted in the context of attention and sensorimotor coordinate transformations. Here we report state-dependent activity modulations during walking in a visual-motor pathway of Drosophila. We used two-photon imaging to monitor intracellular calcium activity in motion...

The relation between exercise performance and certain measures of nutritional state was investigated in 83 patients with stable chronic obstructive lung disease (mean age 62 (8) years). All patients had a forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) less than 50% predicted, an arterial oxygen tension of more than 7.3 kPa, and no severe locomotor, cardiovascular, neurological, or endocrine diso...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to determine the association of static (visual acuity, visual fields, and contrast sensitivity) and dynamic (dynamic visual acuity and motion threshold) measures of vision with mobility performance on a mobility course with obstacles. METHODS A cross-sectional population-based study of 1504 persons aged 72 to 92 years enrolled in the third round of the Sa...

The article reviews the state of art developing miniature walking robots for vertical movement due to friction forces between limbs and surface. In particular, special attention is paid - hexapods, as they have good stability cross-country ability compared other types robots, both wheeled tracked. Unlike hexapods can be fully autonomous. This makes them a potentially versatile tool solving vari...