Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : May 29, 2024 - June 01, 2024
Humans are able to walk by controlling multiple joints simultaneously. In this study, we estimated the impedance of ankle joint with sudden stops of the treadmill belt.We tried to reveal the viscoelastic properties of the lower limb joints considering the interlocking of multiple joints during walking. It was shown that the stiffness of ankle joint has an increasing tendency from 15% to 35% of the walking cycle, and that it can be expected to reach its maximum between 35% to 40% of the walking cycle. We confirmed that the muscle activity level of the gastrocnemius muscle, which is mainly responsible for plantar flexion during walking, roughly corresponds to the phase when the stiffness is expected to be maximum. It was shown that lower limb impedance estimation using sudden stopping of a treadmill is considered to be generally effective in estimating stiffness.
