Video and foot force plate based gait analysis are among the major tools used to study joint kinematics and dynamic motion during human movement. Since Saunders et al. (1953) proposed the fundamental gait theory, many advanced researches relatedin this field have been published. Many previous works were limited to two-dimensional (sagittal plane motion) models of locomotion which were unreliable or difficult to evaluate the effect of rotations of the major joints motion [2,7]. Gerritsen et al.(1995) developed a two-dimensional (sagittal plane) four-rigid body segment musculo-skeletal model to analysis the impact phase in heel-toe running. Since the middle of the 1980's, much work has also been done in the development of three dimensionalmodels of human gait [1,2,3,5].Studies such as [l],[2],[3] and [5] have all applied joint angles as functions of time as input constraint variables instead of position data to avoid redundant input constraints due both to the skin movement and to deformation of skeletal structureduring the experimental measurement. Since measured kinematic data is the major input source to conduct analysis and to develop the equations of motion in the computational model, the accuracy of the model is directly related to the accuracy of the data.Using measured displacement data as the input constraint variables in the human gait model, we can reduce cumulative calculation em)r, when compared to the case of using angular data input such as Euler angles or Bryant angles.In this paper, a new 3-D human gait computational model is developed using position data as the input variables by adopting a translational joint in the middle of the rigid human body linkage. The model can easily calculate the track experimental enor for each body segment.
展开▼
