While neuroscientists identify increasingly complex neural circuits that control animal and human gait, biomechanists find that locomotion requires little control if principles of legged mechanics are heeded that shape and exploit the dynamics of legged systems. Here, we show that muscle reflexes could be vital to link these two observations. We develop a model of human locomotion that is controlled by muscle reflexes which encode principles of legged mechanics. Equipped with this reflex control, we find this model to stabilize into a walking gait from its dynamic interplay with the ground, reproduce human walking dynamics and leg kinematics, tolerate ground disturbances, and adapt to slopes without parameter interventions. In addition, we find this model to predict some individual muscle activation patterns known from walking experiments. The results suggest not only that the interplay between mechanics and motor control is essential to human locomotion, but also that human motor output could for some muscles be dominated by neural circuits that encode principles of legged mechanics.

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An active ankle-foot orthoses (AAFO) is presented where the impedance of the orthotic joint is modulated throughout the walking cycle to treat drop-foot gait. During controlled plantar flexion, a biomimetic torsional spring control is applied where orthotic joint stiffness is actively adjusted to minimize forefoot collisions with the ground. Throughout late stance, joint impedance is minimized so as not to impede powered plantar flexion movements, and during the swing phase, a torsional spring-damper control lifts the foot to provide toe clearance. To assess the clinical effects of variable-impedance control, kinetic and kinematic gait data were collected on two drop-foot participants wearing the AAFO. For each participant, zero, constant, and variable impedance control strategies were evaluated and the results were compared to the mechanics of three age, weight, and height matched normals. We find that actively adjusting joint impedance reduces the occurrence of slap foot allows greater powered plantar flexion and provides for less kinematic difference during swing when compared to normals. These results indicate that a variable-impedance orthosis may have certain clinical benefits for the treatment of drop-foot gait compared to conventional ankle-foot orthoses having zero or constant stiffness joint behaviors.

Over time, leg prostheses have improved in design, but have been incapable of actively adapting to different walking velocities in a manner comparable to a biological limb. People with a leg amputation using such commercially available passive-elastic prostheses require significantly more metabolic energy to walk at the same velocities, prefer to walk slower and have abnormal biomechanics compared with non-amputees. A bionic prosthesis has been developed that emulates the function of a biological ankle during level-ground walking, specifically providing the net positive work required for a range of walking velocities. We compared metabolic energy costs, preferred velocities and biomechanical patterns of seven people with a unilateral transtibial amputation using the bionic prosthesis and using their own passiveelastic prosthesis to those of seven non-amputees during level-ground walking. Compared with using a passive-elastic prosthesis, using the bionic prosthesis decreased metabolic cost by 8 per cent, increased trailing prosthetic leg mechanical work by 57 per cent and decreased the leading biological leg mechanical work by 10 per cent, on average, across walking velocities of 0.75-1.75 m s 21 and increased preferred walking velocity by 23 per cent. Using the bionic prosthesis resulted in metabolic energy costs, preferred walking velocities and biomechanical patterns that were not significantly different from people without an amputation.

SUMMARYAngular momentum is a conserved physical quantity for isolated systems where no external moments act about a bodyʼs center of mass (CM). However, in the case of legged locomotion, where the body interacts with the environment (ground reaction forces), there is no a priori reason for this relationship to hold. A key hypothesis in this paper is that angular momentum is highly regulated throughout the walking cycle about all three spatial directions [͉L(t)͉≈0], and therefore horizontal ground reaction forces and the center of pressure trajectory can be explained predominantly through an analysis that assumes zero net moment about the bodyʼs CM. Using a 16-segment human model and gait data for 10 study participants, we found that calculated zero-moment forces closely match experimental values (R 2 x =0.91; R 2 y =0.90). Additionally, the centroidal moment pivot (point where a line parallel to the ground reaction force, passing through the CM, intersects the ground) never leaves the ground support base, highlighting how closely the body regulates angular momentum. Principal component analysis was used to examine segmental contributions to whole-body angular momentum. We found that whole-body angular momentum is small, despite substantial segmental momenta, indicating large segment-to-segment cancellations (~95% medio-lateral, ~70% anterior-posterior and ~80% vertical). Specifically, we show that adjacent leg-segment momenta are balanced in the medio-lateral direction (left foot momentum cancels right foot momentum, etc.). Further, pelvis and abdomen momenta are balanced by leg, chest and head momenta in the anterior-posterior direction, and leg momentum is balanced by upper-body momentum in the vertical direction. Finally, we discuss the determinants of gait in the context of these segment-to-segment cancellations of angular momentum.

In running, kinetic and potential energy removed from the body during the first half of a running step is transiently stored as elastic strain energy and later released during the second half by elastic recoil. The mechanism of elastic recoil was first proposed in 1964, when Cavagna and collaborators noticed that the forward kinetic energy of the body's center of mass is in phase with fluctuations in gravitational potential energy (Cavagna et al., 1964). They hypothesized that humans and animals most likely store elastic strain energy in muscle, tendon, ligament and perhaps even bone to reduce fluctuations in total mechanical energy. Motivated by these energetic data, Blickhan (1989) and McMahon and Cheng (1990) proposed a simple model to describe the stance period of symmetric running gaits: a point mass attached to a massless, linear spring. Using animal data to select the initial conditions at first ground contact, they demonstrated that the spring-mass model can predict important features of stance period dynamics (Blickhan, 1989;McMahon and Cheng, 1990).Since its formulation the spring-mass model has served as the basis for theoretical treatments of animal and human running, not only for the study of running mechanics, but also stability. Kubow and Full (1999) investigated the stability of hexapod running in numerical simulation. At a preferred forward velocity, a pre-defined sinusoidal pattern of each leg's ground reaction force resulted in stable movement patterns.However, the legs could not be viewed as entirely spring-like since their force production did not change in response to disturbances applied to the system. Later Schmitt and Holmes (2000) found a lateral spring-mass stability for hexapod running on a conservative level where total mechanical energy is constant. However, in this study, they investigated lateral and not sagittal plane stability in a uniform gravitational field. In contrast, Seyfarth et al. (2002) investigated the stride-tostride sagittal plane stability of a spring-mass model. Although the model is conservative it can distribute its energy into forward and horizontal directions by selecting different leg angles at touch-down . Surprisingly, this partitioning turns out to be assymptotically stable and predicts human data at moderate running speeds (5·m·s -1 ). However, model stability cannot be achieved at slow running speeds (≤3·m·s -1 ). Additionally, at moderate speeds (~5·m·s -1 ), a high accuracy of the landing angle (±1°) is required, necessitating precise control of leg orientation.The purpose of this study is to investigate control strategies that enhance the stability of the spring-mass model on a conservative level. In the control scheme of Seyfarth et al. (2002), the angle with which the spring-mass model strikes the ground is held constant from stride-to-stride. In this investigation, we relax this constraint and impose a swing-leg retraction, a behavior that has been observed in running In running, the spring-like axial behavior of stance limbs is a well-known and rem...

BackgroundMany soldiers are expected to carry heavy loads over extended distances, often resulting in physical and mental fatigue. In this study, the design and testing of an autonomous leg exoskeleton is presented. The aim of the device is to reduce the energetic cost of loaded walking. In addition, we present the Augmentation Factor, a general framework of exoskeletal performance that unifies our results with the varying abilities of previously developed exoskeletons.MethodsWe developed an autonomous battery powered exoskeleton that is capable of providing substantial levels of positive mechanical power to the ankle during the push-off region of stance phase. We measured the metabolic energy consumption of seven subjects walking on a level treadmill at 1.5 m/s, while wearing a 23 kg vest.ResultsDuring the push-off portion of the stance phase, the exoskeleton applied positive mechanical power with an average across the gait cycle equal to 23 ± 2 W (11.5 W per ankle). Use of the autonomous leg exoskeleton significantly reduced the metabolic cost of walking by 36 ± 12 W, which was an improvement of 8 ± 3% (p = 0.025) relative to the control condition of not wearing the exoskeleton.ConclusionsIn the design of leg exoskeletons, the results of this study highlight the importance of minimizing exoskeletal power dissipation and added limb mass, while providing substantial positive power during the walking gait cycle.

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