Title
Robotic Platform for Human Gait Analysis.
Abstract
A hydraulically actuated platform with 4-degrees of freedom (4-DOF) was designed to be able to apply velocity-or acceleration-controlled floor surface perturbations to freely walking human subjects. The apparatus was required to provide velocity-controlled translational perturbations over the floor surface, rotational perturbations about the ankle joint, and acceleration-controlled vertical translational perturbations. The apparatus was physically constructed, and tested by both measurements of dynamics and repeatability. Crossover of movement from one DOF to another was shown to be less than 1 min or 0.5 degrees for all desired perturbations. Repeated perturbations were nearly identical with a standard deviation of less than 0.2 mm over translational axes. The application of the platform to human gait research was demonstrated with a protocol of midstance phase perturbations (n = 8). For this, the platform controller was programmed to randomly select one out of three conditions: 1) no movement (control); 2) upward perturbation of 0.8 g, 50 mm, 300 ins after heel contact; 3) downward perturbation of 0.8 g, 50 mm, 300 ins after heel contact. In total, 90 trials (3 conditions x 30 repetitions) were recorded for each subject. By singling out the SOL EMG and normalizing and averaging over the subject population, it was shown that the upward and downward perturbations elicited at least two distinctive stereotypical reflex responses in the ankle extensors, opposite in sign. All subjects reported comfort with the apparatus and nobody fell.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1109/TBME.2007.894949
IEEE Trans. Biomed. Engineering
Keywords
Field
DocType
acceleration,robots,kinematics,standard deviation,mobile robots,robotics,hydraulic actuator,degress of freedom,degree of freedom,gait analysis,parallel manipulator
Population,Parallel manipulator,Kinematics,Control theory,Computer science,Gait analysis,Acceleration,Gait (human),Standard deviation,Ankle
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
54
9
0018-9294
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.64
1
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Johan van Doornik1122.66
Thomas Sinkjaer2141.92