4.0 Article

Kinematics and Dynamics of Burst Transitions

Journal

JOURNAL OF MOTOR BEHAVIOR
Volume 46, Issue 4, Pages 267-276

Publisher

ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/00222895.2014.896780

Keywords

locomotion; biomechanics; gait transition; biped

Funding

  1. Research Foundation-Flanders [F6/15DP G.0183.09, FWO08/ASP/152]
  2. European Community [231688]

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Subjects (N = 14) were instructed to walk at comfortable walking speed and to start sprinting on an external (visual) stimulus. This is a burst transition. To accelerate maximally, different strategies can be used. The choice for a strategy was hypothesized to be (a) dependent of the body's dynamical status, which is in its turn dependent on the signal timing within the gait cycle; and (b) influenced by the performance and efficacy of the different strategies. Three-dimensional kinematics and ground reaction forces were used to discriminate between strategies and to calculate work (W-total). Distance laser data yielded performance measures and the work related to the forward acceleration (W-objective). Efficacy was calculated as the ratio of W-objective to W-total. Subjects mainly used 2 strategies among others depending on the timing of the stimulus: (a) subjects placed their body center of mass (BCOM) in front of their center of pressure (COP) by tilting the trunk forward and flexing the knee, resulting in a sudden forward acceleration but a relatively fair efficacy; (b) subjects placed their COP behind their BCOM by placing the foot of the swing leg backward. This led to a high performance with high efficacy and was therefore the most ecologically relevant.

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