172

Humans are bipedal creatures who rely on appendages known as legs as the primary means of lo-
comotion. The human legs are the lower limb of the body. They extend from the hip to the ankle,
encompassing the knee and everything in between. The legs are simple instruments, and yet the
complex coordination among each component in it is able to generate the required force and mo-
tion to move the body forward. This movement is called gaiting. Gaiting is dened as the manner
in which locomotion is achieved by using the human limbs. Some common forms of human gaiting
are walking, running, crawling, and hopping. Each of them requires varying starting orientations,
stopping motions, changes in speed, alternations in direction, and modications for changes in
slope [1].
The motivation to understand the processes of human gaiting are beginning to take root in
the medical world. The need for articial legs by amputees to experience a normal daily life has
pushed early medical pioneers to build various models for the legs. However, these models were too
primitive to account for the complicated nature of gaiting. Today, rapid developments in biomedical
research have provided the resources to nally make better advances in discovering the underlying
mechanics of gaiting. Apart from restoring amputees, understanding human leg motions can pro-
vide a standard or a reference to compare normal and abnormal gaiting that is a result from pain,
paralysis, tissue damage, or other motor control dysfunction. This would perhaps provide better
efciency in detecting, and possibly curing, those problems.
The modeling of the human gait focuses on three components of the leg. The hips, knee, and
ankle are the primary areas of research. Although all these three parts work together to provide mo-
tion, there have been only isolated studies for each. Many articles and journals provide insight on
only one of the three components. This could be because the coordination of all three is relatively
complex and would require an excess of resources to combine them. One known application for all
three would be the construction of robots to mimic human gaiting. Scientists in Japan had produced
a mechanical automaton called the ASIMO (Advanced Step in Mobility). The ASIMO is a robot
built specializing in emulating human gaiting. Much of the work on the robot focuses on balance
and coordination. The motion of the legs can be easily emulated, but without coordination and
feedback among the hips, knee, and ankle, the robot continues to fumble in its initial design [5].
Gait and Stance Control System
GAIT AND STANCE CONTROL SYSTEM 173
The leg structure is commonly characterized by a set of interconnecting pendulum systems.
In Figure 16.1, it can be observed that the rst pendulum system begins from the hip to the knee.
The swinging angle from the hip will determine the displacement of the knee. A second pendulum
system connects the knee to the ankle. Knee movements provide for the position on how the ankle
lands. During gaiting, two different situations arise in sequence: the statically stable supported
phase, in which the whole body is kept aloft by both legs simultaneously; and the statically unstable
support phase, in which only one foot is in contact with the ground while the other is being trans-
ferred from the back to the front. In a single walking cycle, the kinematic structure of locomotion
changes from an open to a closed kinematic chain [4].
The coordination of the interconnecting pendulum assumptions can be further observed the
simple gaiting (walking) process in Figure 16.2. The human walking is a process of locomotion in
which the erect, moving body is supported by rst one leg and then the other; as the moving body
passes over the supporting leg, the other leg swings forward in preparation for its next support
phase. One foot of the other is always on the ground, and during that period when the support of
the body is transferred from the trailing to the leading leg there is a brief period when both feet are
on the ground [2].
As walking speed increases, the periods of double support become smaller fractions of the
walking cycle until, eventually, as a person starts to run, they disappear altogether and are replaced
by brief periods when neither food is on the ground. The cyclic alternations of the support function
of each leg and the existence of a transfer period when both feet are on the ground are essential
features of the locomotion process known as walking.
FIGURE 16.1: The leg system of the human body.
174 BASIC FEEDBACK CONTROLS IN BIOMEDICINE
In attempting to understand the processes of gaiting and to combine the models for the hips,
knee, and ankle together, Figure 16.3 displays the logic of a model. The pelvis, or the hips, is set as the
starting point with the ankle as the ending point. The hips would receive an input signal from the cen-
tral nervous system (CNS) or the peripheral nervous system, which is dependent on the type of action
intended. Mainly for our model, input would come from the CNS; there will be no reex reactions.
The hip would inuence the knee, and in turn the knee would determine the reaction of the ankle. The
system of communication between the three components is in series with feedbacks coming out from
each of their respective outputs. The nal output would be a change in displacement or position [3].
Several assumptions were made for the modeling. The whole gating process is assumed to
take place from the hips and down. The process for moving is totally isolated to just the coordina-
tion between the hips, knee, and ankle. There will also be no additional loads applied to the legs
other than the upper body. The legs will just be carrying the mass of the entire human body and
will not be subjected to external forces. The walking surface for the leg model is assumed to be a at
surface with adequate friction coefcient for motion. Because the model focuses on the lower body,
FIGURE 16.2: The phases of a normal gaiting process (breeze walking).
FIGURE 16.3: The block diagram of the mechanical gaiting coordination system.
GAIT AND STANCE CONTROL SYSTEM 175
FIGURE 16.4: Mechanical model for the hips.
inuence from the vestibular feedback input and visual perception are ignored. The legs are made
to act independently of their input. The arms will not be involved in balancing the body while in
motion. Also, the legs are assumed to be in two-dimensional motions.
The model is rst broken into the common three components; the hips, knee, and ankle.
Each of these segments will be individually observed. Transfer functions were obtained for each
component. Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) virtual in-
struments (VIs) were also constructed to simulate the transfer functions responses, and then Bode
plots, root locus, and Nyquist plots were developed for each transfer function. Finally, all segments
were combined together to form an overall system that represent the entire leg. Again, LabVIEW
was used to simulate the entire legs response.
16.1 THE HIP
There are not many models that describe the human hip; hence, the mechanical model use in the
LabVIEW program is shown in Figure 16.4. This part of the leg is modeled as a thighbone with
an actuator behind the bone. An analytic relation between the force provided by the actuator and
the torque needed to move the articulation has been found. In particular, the segment k represents
the arm of the hip joint torque for the model. The reaction force due to gravity is Mg, where M is
the mass of the leg, and g is the gravitational acceleration due to gravity. The length of the thigh-
bone is L, and from the diagram, k is found to be a proportion of L, in this case 0.7. The angle is
between the actuator and the arm of the hip joint torque, and is treated as constant for this model.
From observation, is it assumed to be 10 or 0.175 rad.

P(s ) =
MgL
ksin( )
s
s
2
+ 1

176 BASIC FEEDBACK CONTROLS IN BIOMEDICINE
where
L = length of thighbone = 48 cm = 0.48 m
M = mass of leg (men, 19.525.2 kg; women, 11.716.6 kg)
g = acceleration due to gravity (9.80 m/s
2
)
k = arm of the hip joint torque, estimated from diagram to be 70% of L =
33.6 cm
= estimated to be 10 (= 0.175 rad), low angle so sin(): = 0.175
Figures 16.5 and 16.6 show the LabVIEW front panel view and block diagram, which contain the
control VIs used in developing the LabVIEW hip program.
16.2 THE KNEE
To model the human knee, the tendon can be treated as a small torsional spring damper with inertia
( J ), stiffness (K ), and damping (B) (Figure 16.7) Engineers try to estimate these parameters through
experimental data from real human knees. When the tendon is excited, a signal is sent through the
FIGURE 16.5: Hip VI front panel.
GAIT AND STANCE CONTROL SYSTEM 177
nervous system to the spinal cord reporting a structural change (that is tendon length). The nervous
system then sends a signal back to the tendon to produce a reex. There are receptors on the muscle
called spindles, which have their own dynamics and are shown in the model as a transfer function
in the feedback path. These spindles are modeled as a spring (K
pe
) and damper (B
pe
) in parallel, and
then with the pair in series with another spring (K
se
).
FIGURE 16.6: Hip VI block diagram.
FIGURE 16.7: Mechanical model of the knee.
178 BASIC FEEDBACK CONTROLS IN BIOMEDICINE
Figure 16.8 is a commonly used block diagram to reason out the process of the knee,
where

S(s ) =
1
K
se
(B
pe
s + K
pe
)

For the feedback system,

G(s ) =
G(s )
1 + G(s )H(s )

Therefore,
G
1
(s ) =
1
Js
1 +
B
Js
=
1
Js + B
G
2
(s ) =
1
Js
2
+ Bs
1 +
K
Js
2
+ Bs
=
1
Js
2
+ Bs + K
where B = 2.4382, J = 0.19033, K = 42.361, K
pe
= 4.7627, B
pe
= 0.96703, and K
se
= 0.10774.
Figures 16.9 and 16.10 show the LabVIEW front panel view and block diagram, which con-
tain the control VIs used in developing the LabVIEW knee program.
FIGURE 16.8: Block diagram of knee.
GAIT AND STANCE CONTROL SYSTEM 179
FIGURE 16.9: Front panel of knee.
FIGURE 16.10: Block diagram of knee.
180 BASIC FEEDBACK CONTROLS IN BIOMEDICINE
16.3 THE ANKLE
Human standing posture in sagittal plane, as approximated to an inverted pendulum, is an unstable
system and requires to be stabilized. Several sensory organs seem to be used for stabilizing the up-
right posture in normal subject. The skeletal system of the standing posture is approximated as an
inverted pendulum in sagittal plane as shown in Figure 16.11. Knee and hip joints were xed by
brace and ignored. Although the sway of the pendulum is small, the inertia of the skeletal system,
viscosity, and elasticity of the muscle, and gravity effect can be described as a two-order delay dy-
namics. A proportional, integral, and derivative (PID) controller is applied to M(s) and G(s). The
muscle characteristic is approximated to one-order delay and dead time. The feedback parameters
can be decided by a model matching method similar to the PID joint controller design. The block
diagram of the ankle process is shown in Figure 16.12.
From the dynamics of human ankle stiffness, the transfer function G(s) is given as

G(s ) =
(s )
T(s )
=
1
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2

where
(s) = ankle joint angle
T(s) = moment of ankle joint torque; at 20 Nm external torque
FIGURE 16.11: Mechanical model of ankle.
GAIT AND STANCE CONTROL SYSTEM 181
J = moment of ankle joint inertia (0.008 N m s
2
/rad)
B = moment of ankle joint viscosity (10 N m s/rad)
K = moment of ankle joint elasticity (240 N m/rad)
m = mass of human (80 kg)
l = height of human (1.7 m)
FIGURE 16.12: Block diagram of the ankle process.
FIGURE 16.13: Front panel of ankle.
182 BASIC FEEDBACK CONTROLS IN BIOMEDICINE
Then, with 0 external torque, M(s) is calculated as

M(s ) =
K
m
e
Ds
1 + s

where
K
m
= gain of muscle (31 N m/rad)
t = time constant of muscle (=0.1 s for f = 10 Hz)
D = dead time of muscle (~350 s)

G
1
(s ) = M(s )G(s ) =

1
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2

K
m
e
Ds
1 + s





G
1H
(s ) =

1
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2

K
m
e
Ds
1 + s
1 +

1
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2

K
m
e
Ds
1 + s
K
p
+ K
d
s
=
1
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2
1 + s
K
m
e
Ds
+ K
p
+ K
d
s

FIGURE 16.14: Block diagram of ankle.
GAIT AND STANCE CONTROL SYSTEM 183

G
2
(s ) = G
1H
(s )
K
i
s
=
K
i
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2
1 + s
K
m
e
Ds
s + K
p
s + K
d
s
2

G
x
(s ) =
K
i
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2
1 + s
K
m
e
Ds
s + K
p
s + K
d
s
2
1 +
K
i
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2
1 + s
K
m
e
Ds
s + K
p
s + K
d
s
2
=
K
i
Js
2
+ Bs + K
mgl
2
1 + s
K
m
e
Ds
s + K
p
s + K
d
s
2
+ K
i

FIGURE 16.15: Front panel of overall.
184 BASIC FEEDBACK CONTROLS IN BIOMEDICINE
FIGURE 16.16: Block diagram of overall.
Figures 16.13 and 16.14 show the LabVIEW front panel view and block diagram, which
contain the control VIs used in developing the LabVIEW ankle program.
16.4 OVERALL SYSTEM
Figures 16.15 and 16.16 are the modeling of the overall system in LabVIEW. All the transfer
functions obtained are assumed to work in series. The response of the system is simulated and dis-
played.
GAIT AND STANCE CONTROL SYSTEM 185
REFERENCES
[1] Rose, J., and Gamble, J. G., Human Walking, 3rd ed., Lippincott Williams & Wilkins,
Philadelphia (2006).
[2] Giannini, S., Catani, F., Benedetti, M. G., and Leardini, A., Gait Analysis: Methodologies
and Clinical Applications, 1st ed., IOS P, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1994).
[3] Vaughan, C. L., Davis, B. L., and OConnor, J. C., Dynamics of Human Gait, Human Kinet-
ics, Campaign, IL (1992).
[4] Muscato, G., and Spampinato, G., Kinematical model and control architecture for a human
inspired ve DOF robotic leg, Mechatronics, 17, 4563 (2007), <http://www.sciencedirect
.com/science/article/B6V43-4KVXPKF-1/1/090b0a36e51f67445c5a4ceaad969241>, ac-
cessed 2 Apr. 2008.
[5] Kim, J.-Y., Park, I. W., and Oh, J.-H., Experimental realization of dynamic walking of the
biped, Adv. Robotics, 20, 707736 (2006).