The present study investigated the characteristics of foot trajectory patterns during obstacle step-over between individuals with normal or corrected vision, and the visually impaired. The normal vision group comprised ten men with normal or corrected vision, while the visually impaired group comprised ten men with pigmentary retinal degeneration. Both groups performed two obstacle step-over conditions （heights of obstacles: 4 cm and 15 cm） from a free position. Gait parameters while stepping over the obstacle, were analyzed. The visually impaired group had significantly advanced initiation of the step-over motion, increased step length, and increased time required to complete the task in both conditions when compared to the normal vision group. Furthermore, the highest points of the leading and trailing feet while stepping over the obstacle were significantly higher in the visually impaired group, and the coefficient of effort in the visually impaired group was significantly larger than that for the normal vision group. Additionally, the visually impaired group tended to secure foot clearance mainly by hip flexion movement. These results suggested that individuals with visual impairment spend more time and effort during the obstacle step-over to ensure a safer trajectory path and a lower trip and fall risk.

Gait analysis is utilized not only in medical fields such as orthopedic surgery and rehabilitation but also in form correction of athletes and is also being conducted as a biometric identification technology capable of identifying individuals. On the other hand, in the civil engineering field, a lot of gait analyses for healthy subjects are carried out in order to investigate the resonant vibration problem of pedestrian bridge. A major feature of gait analysis in the civil engineering is to calculate dynamic walking load that acts on the bridge surface as dynamic load factor （DLF）. Therefore, in this study, for the six subjects, DLF in three directions （vertical, fore and after, lateral directions） was calculated using the power spectrum density of the acceleration measured on the right lumber part. As a result, it was found that walking authentication of all six subjects was able to be done correctly using the RMS3 summed up with the root mean square （RMS） value of DLF in three directions. This led to the conclusion that the walking identification using DLF was one of convenient and useful methods.