Bio mechanics and human locomotion

Abstract

Biomechanical investigation of human movement contributing to rehabilitation treatment has gained an increasing interest from researchers on regards to human impairments and assistive techniques. There are many methods of treatment previously investigated namely with the focus being towards the nervous system. Due to the advancement of technology over time, motion capture became possible where it allowed biomechanical investigation on human joint gauge to obtain the specific detail of human motion. Prior to the advancement of motion capture cameras, subjects were filmed on TV-video and force platforms that recorded the reaction forces. Currently there are a few methods being researched to attain a better understanding on alternative methods to rehabilitate impaired subjects. Firstly being the usage of force plates in order to obtain the force at the foot to calculate the loadings at the joints and secondly employing surface marker techniques to construct a model of the lower extremities and to identify the anatomical joints. Another method uses Electromyography techniques which gives the estimated muscle strengths. Even with the techniques previously mentioned, the joint loadings such as the moment for the lower extremities while ascending and descending of staircase was not found during time of this project. Two steps staircase were used in this experiment where the kinematics was analyzed by a motion capture camera and an inverse dynamic approach was applied to compute the joint moments. Therefore this project would concentrate on the kinematics, dynamics, kinetics and human locomotion of lower extremities of a few subjects while incorporating the related parameter in developing the rehabilitation system.