The inverse dynamics approach is commonly adopted in a human gait analysis. Displacements of the human body segments and ground reaction forces are known from measurements. The joint reaction forces and muscle net torques (which cannot be measured directly) are calculated. Since the ground reaction forces are known it is not necessary to model the foot-ground contact. The inverse dynamics appro...

A three-dimensional, neuromusculoskeletal model of the body was combined with dynamic optimization theory to simulate normal walking on level ground. The body was modeled as a 23 degree-of-freedom mechanical linkage, actuated by 54 muscles. The dynamic optimization problem was to calculate the muscle excitation histories, muscle forces, and limb motions subject to minimum metabolic energy expen...

Gait analysis is a feasible approach for human identification in intelligent video surveillance. However, the effectiveness of the dominant silhouette-based approaches are severely affected by dressing, bag, hair style and the like. In this paper, we propose a useful 2-D structural feature, named skeleton-based feature, effective improvements for human pose estimation in human walking environme...

A wide range of selective pressures have been advanced as possible causes for the adoption of bipedalism in the hominin lineage. One suggestion has been that because modern human walking is relatively efficient compared to that of a typical quadruped, the ancestral quadruped may have reaped an energetic advantage when it walked on two legs. While it has become clear that human walking is relati...

Thorpe et al. (Reports, 1 June 2007, p. 1328) concluded that human bipedalism evolved from a type of bipedal posture they observed in extant orangutans with seemingly human-like extended knees. However, humans share knuckle-walking characters with African apes that are absent in orangutans. These are most parsimoniously explained by positing a knuckle-walking precursor to human bipedalism.

Ever since human ancestors picked up rocks and used them as tools, technology has enhanced human capabilities. Over the last decades more and more research has been done in trying to enhance strength and endurance by means of an exoskeleton. Reducing the metabolic cost of human walking using lower extremity exoskeletons is one of the challenges that has been taken on by several research groups....