| The understanding of our gait on level ground is being gradually perfected. There hasn’t been much research, however, on the gait of healthy people on different slopes. Due to constraints by testing conditions, current studies mostly used treadmills to create an inclined surface. While kinematics and electromyography can be easily recorded from treadmill tests, it is very difficult to collect kinetic statistics. Some researches use the pressure plate instead. They usually involve small slopes such as±3°.The road surface in real life, however, is not completely horizontal. In many cases the slope may be bigger than±3°, for instance, the surface of a hiking trail, of a pedestrian bridge, and of a slope operation. Different slopes constitute different ways of interference with the human body. We make certain changes in our gait characteristics and posture control to adapt to different slopes. The purpose of these changes is to maintain the stability and continuity of walking, as well as to reduce the pain causd by too much ground reaction force. Such adaptive changes to maintain balance and normal gait have greater impacts on particular groups of people. For instance, the elderly usually maintain a normal gait through reducing their pace and step length, as well as increasing their stance. A lower pace, however, will affect their ability to balance and hence increase the risk of falls. Meanwhile, the elderly are at greater risk of stumbling when walking uphill.Currently, researches on slope are mostly conducted through animal experiments, with a view to exploring the mechanism of motor control. Only a few researches focus on the different gait characteristics on different slopes. They mainly focus on the analysis of the kinematics of lower limbs. Existing researches prove that quadruped animals adopt different walking strategies when walking on level ground, uphill and downhill, and humans may adopt similar changes when walking on slopes.This research has collected the kinematic, kinetic and EMG data of eight healthy young men walking on seven different slopes, with a view to comparing the kinematic, kinetic and EMG parameters of walking uphill, downhill and on level ground, and finding the similarities and differences thereof.This research makes the following findings:1) based on an analysis of the kinematic, kinetic and EMG data of eight volunteers walking on seven different slopes, it is concluded that walking uphill, downhill and on level ground is dictated by different control strategies. Inter alia, the priority in walking uphill is to increase the output power of the propulsion, whereas the priority in walking downhill is to maintain the balance of the body.2) When the slope is close to±12°, the human body cannot maintain normal walking gait. This shift may have happened between slopes of±6°and12°. But further research is required to determine at exactly which angle the gait changed and how.A study of the kinematic, kinetic and EMG results has revealed the control strategies of the lower limbs while walking on different slopes. It has also depicted roughly the angles at which the strategies change. The contribution made by this research, therefore, lies, first of all, in that it added to the kinematic, kinetic and EMG data of walking on slopes and thus improved our undertaking of slope walking. Moreover, it has developed and verified a set of slope gait testing system with adjustable slopes and involving a force plate. It also gave a detailed account of the whole process from design to post-processing, which would be meaningful to enriching the testing methods of biomechanics, thus contributing to rehabilitation training, prosthesis design and neural control research. In addition, it provides reference for future researches on gait in slope environment. |
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