During overground or treadmill walking, the stance phase and cycle durations are reduced as speed increases, whereas swing phase duration remains relatively invariant. When the speed of the left and right sides is unequal, as is the case during split-belt locomotion or when walking along a circular path, adjustments in stance and swing phases are observed, which could alter the phase/cycle dura...

Falls that occur as a result of a slip are one of the leading causes of injuries, particularly in the elderly population. Previous studies have focused on slips that occur on a flat surface. Slips on a laterally sloping surface are important and may be related to different mechanisms of balance recovery. This type of slip might result in different gait adaptations to those previously described ...

To gain insight into the neural mechanisms controlling different forms of quadrupedal walking of normal cats, data on postural orientation, hindlimb kinematics, and motor patterns of selected hindlimb muscles were assessed for four grades of upslope walking, from 25 to 100% (45 degrees incline), and compared with similar data for level treadmill walking (0.6 m/s). Kinematic data for the hip, kn...

With free walk velocity; the individual will naturally enlist the speed that will provide maximum energy efficiency. Inspired by this idea, we exploit a passivity based control strategy to study, the preferred walking gait of a compass-like biped robot. In fact, for any ground slope, we use a dynamic optimization of the mechanical cost which is proportional to the mechanical work in the system ...

Kido, Aiko, Naofumi Tanaka, and Richard B. Stein. Spinal reciprocal inhibition in human locomotion. J Appl Physiol 96: 1969–1977, 2004. First published December 5, 2003; 10.1152/ japplphysiol.01060.2003.—The purpose of this paper was to study spinal inhibition during several different motor tasks in healthy human subjects. The short-latency, reciprocal inhibitory pathways from the common perone...