Study of Gait Cycle Using a Five-Link Inverted Pendulum Model: First Developments

Abstract

Gait cycle has been the target of many studies in the last decades in order to identify the normal walking patterns of humans. The usefulness of these studies is of utmost importance to construct mathematical models that are capable to achieve stability during walking. Based on this fact, it seems justified the present effort to construct a model to simulate a complete stride in healthy humans. Thus, in this work, a five-link inverted pendulum model in the sagittal plane with 5 degrees of freedom (DOFs) based on Euler-Lagrange equations is being constructed with the main objective to concern stability during gait cycle. To do that, this study was divided into two parts: the first one is represented by this article and it is regarding to the model construction and data collection; the second part is relative to a future work and it concerns to the model validation and an analysis of the stiffness variation with the power and speed during gait cycle. Regarding to the results of the present study, good correlations were obtained between the data collected and the data presented in literature, which demonstrates a good data acquisition.