Task-level regulation enhances global stability of the simplest dynamic walker

Much remains unknown about how considerations such as stability and energy minimization shape the way humans walk. While active neuromotor control keeps humans upright, they also need to choose from multiple stepping regulation strategies to achieve one or more task goals, such as maintaining a desired speed or direction. Experiments on human treadmill walking motivate an important question: why do humans prefer one task-level regulation strategy over another---perhaps to enhance their ability to reject large disturbances? Here, we study the relationship between task-level regulation and global stability in a powered compass walker on a treadmill, with added step-to-step speed and position regulators. For treadmill walking, we find that speed regulation greatly enlarges and regularizes the unregulated walker's stability region, i.e., its basin of attraction, much more than position regulation. Thus, our results suggest a possible explanation for the experimental finding that humans strongly prioritize regulating speed from one stride to the next, even as they walk economically on average. Furthermore, our work suggests a functional connection between task-level motor regulation and global stability---and, thus, perhaps even fall risk.

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Work Title Task-level regulation enhances global stability of the simplest dynamic walker
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Navendu S. Patil
  2. Jonathan B Dingwell
  3. Joseph P. Cusumano
Keyword
  1. fall risk
  2. task-level regulation
  3. redundancy
  4. basin of attraction
  5. global stability
  6. bipedal walking
License CC BY 4.0 (Attribution)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Accepted Author Manuscript for publication in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface
Subject
  1. Biomechanics
  2. Robotics
  3. Motor control
Language
  1. English
Deposited June 25, 2020

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Version 1
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  • Created
  • Added Patil-et-al_RegGS_V3b_AuthorCopy.pdf
  • Added Creator Navendu S. Patil
  • Added Creator Jonathan B Dingwell
  • Added Creator Joseph P. Cusumano
  • Published