Citation

Villarreal DJ, Quintero D, Gregg RD. IEEE Access 2016; 4: 893-904.

Affiliation

Departments of Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

DOI

10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2535661

PMID

27570719

Abstract

Bipedal locomotion is a popular area of study across multiple fields (e.g., biomechanics, neuroscience and robotics). Different hypotheses and models have tried explaining how humans achieve stable locomotion. Perturbations that produce shifts in the nominal periodic orbit of the joint kinematics during locomotion could inform about the manner in which the human neuromechanics represent the phase of gait. Ideally, this type of perturbation would modify the progression of the human subject through the gait cycle without deviating from the nominal kinematic orbits of the leg joints. However, there is a lack of publicly available experimental data with this type of perturbation. This paper presents the design and validation of a perturbation mechanism and an experimental protocol capable of producing phase-shifting perturbations of the gait cycle. The effects of this type of perturbation on the gait cycle are statistically quantified and analyzed in order to show that a clean phase shift in the gait cycle was achieved. The data collected during these experiments will be publicly available for the scientific community to test different hypotheses and models of human locomotion.

Language: en