Estimation of hip and ankle visco-elastic parameters during quiet standing Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • Balance control naturally deteriorates with age, so it comes as no surprise that nearly 30%25 of the elderly population in the United States report stability problems that lead to difficulty performing daily activities or even falling. Postural stability is an integral task to daily living which is reliant upon the control of the ankle and hip. To this end, the estimation of ankle and hip parameters in quiet standing can be a useful tool when analyzing compensatory actions aimed at maintaining postural stability. Using an analytical approach, this work builds upon the results obtained by the authors and expands it to a two degrees of freedom system where the first two modes of vibration of a standing human are considered. The physiological parameters a second-order Kelvin-Voigt model were estimated for the actuation of the ankle and hip. Estimates were obtained during quiet standing when healthy volunteers were subjected to a step-like perturbation. This paper presents the analysis of a second-order nonlinear system of differential equations representing the control of lumped muscle-tendon units at the ankle and hip. This paper utilizes motion capture measurements to obtain the estimates of the control parameters of the system. The dynamic measurements are utilized to construct a simple time-dependent regression that allows calculating the timevarying estimates of the control and body segment parameters with a single perturbation. This work represents a step forward in estimating the control parameters of human quiet standing where, usually, the analysis is either restricted to the first vibrational mode of an inverted pendulum model or the control parameters are assumed to be time-invariant. The proposed method allows for the analysis of hip related movement in the control of stability and highlights the importance of core muscle training. © 2018 ASME.

publication date

  • 2018-01-01