Acceleration patterns of the head and pelvis when walking on level and irregular surfaces.

The present study was designed to explore how the interaction between the fascicles and tendinous tissues is involved in storage and utilization of elastic energy during human walking. Eight male subjects walked with a natural cadence (1.4 ± 0.1 m/s) on a 10-m-long force plate system. In vivo techniques were employed to record the Achilles tendon force and to scan real-time fascicle lengths for two muscles (medial gastrocnemius and soleus). The results showed that tendinous tissues of both medial gastrocnemius and soleus muscles lengthened slowly throughout the single-stance phase and then recoiled rapidly close to the end of the ground contact. However, the fascicle length changes demonstrated different patterns and amplitudes between two muscles. The medial gastrocnemius fascicles were stretched during the early single-stance phase and then remained isometrically during the late-stance phase. In contrast, the soleus fascicles were lengthened until the end of the single-stance phase. These findings suggest that the elastic recoil takes place not as a spring-like bouncing but as a catapult action in natural human walking. The interaction between the muscle fascicles and tendinous tissues plays an important role in the process of release of elastic energy, although the leg muscles, which are commonly accepted as synergists, do not have similar mechanical behavior of fascicles in this catapult action.

https://www.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/japplphysiol.00189.2005

Muscle-tendon interaction and elastic energy usage in human walking

Automated person recognition by walking and running via model-based approaches

https://www.archives-pmr.org/article/S0003-9993(03)00944-4/pdf

Walking stability and sensorimotor function in older people with diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

Presents a correspondence-free method to automatically estimate the spatio-temporal parameters of gait (stride length and cadence) of a walking person from video. Stride and cadence are functions of body height, weight and gender, and we use these biometrics for identification and verification of people. The cadence is estimated using the periodicity of a walking person. Using a calibrated camera system, the stride length is estimated by first tracking the person and estimating their distance travelled over a period of time. By counting the number of steps (again using periodicity) and assuming constant-velocity walking, we are able to estimate the stride to within 1 cm for a typical outdoor surveillance configuration (under certain assumptions). With a database of 17 people and eight samples of each, we show that a person is verified with an equal error rate (EER) of 11%, and correctly identified with a probability of 40%. This method works with low-resolution images of people and is robust to changes in lighting, clothing and tracking errors. It is view-invariant, though performance is optimal in a near-fronto-parallel configuration.

V M Zatsiorky

Papers

Basic kinematics of walking: step length and step frequency: a review