The Condition of Dynamic Stability for Self-Paced Treadmill Walking Based on Inverted Pendulum Model

A self-paced treadmill automatically adjusts speed in real-time to match the user’s walking speed, presumably leading to a more nature gait than fixed-speed treadmill. However, previous study has proven that the acceleration applied to the subjects would influence the gait stability. In order to have insights on to which extent will the accelerations affect gait stability, simulation analysis based on conceptual model has been done in the current study. This paper utilized a non-inertial frame based spring-loaded inverted pendulum model to analysis the condition of stability during continuous self-paced treadmill walking. Simulations were done for 100 continuous self-paced treadmill walking at the normal walking speed. And 10ms impulse accelerations of different magnitudes with the range of (−1g, 1g) were applied at different gait events such as toe-off, foot-flat and heel-strike. The simulation results showed that the magnitude of the accelerations had significantly influence on continuous self-paced treadmill walking and directional-dependency was also found. However, no significantly difference was found when applying the impulse acceleration at different gait events.