A-18 Relation between walking speed and upper body behavior of incline walking with various foot strike patterns

Abstract

Recent bipedal walking researches suggested that it was useful to treat the COM behavior as an inverted double pendulum because there was a positive correlation between the angle of the upper inverted pendulum and walking speed on level walking and incline walking with free foot strike pattern. However, there is no research which analyzes the relation between the upper inverted pendulum angle and walking behavior with various foot strike patterns. Therefore, in this study, we measured incline walking on slope whose gradient is 15 degrees with three foot strike patterns (Free strike, Toe strike and Heel strike) and analyzed the relation between walking speed and the upper inverted pendulum angle at each foot strike pattern based on the inverted double pendulum. As a result, we found that there was a positive correlation between walking speed and the upper inverted pendulum angle with all foot strike pattern (R = 0.38-0.83). This showed that human utilized their upper body to adjust walking speed regardless of foot strike patterns.