Abstract:

In this paper, an experimental analysis of overcoming obstacle in human walking is carried out by means of a motion capture system. In the experiment, the lower body of an adult human is divided into seven segments, and three markers are pasted to each segment with the aim to obtain moving trajectory and to calculate joint variation during walking. Moreover, kinematic data in terms of displacement, velocity and acceleration are acquired as well. In addition, ground reaction forces are measured using force sensors. Based on the experimental results, features of overcoming obstacle in human walking are ana-lyzed. Experimental results show that the reason which leads to smooth walking can be identified as that the human has slight movement in the vertical direction during walking; the reason that human locomotion uses gravity effectively can be identified as that feet rotate around the toe joints during toe-off phase aiming at using gravitational potential energy to provide propulsion for swing phase. Furthermore, both normal walking gait and obstacle overcoming gait are characterized in a form that can provide necessary knowledge and useful databases for the implementation of motion planning and gait planning towards overcoming obstacle for humanoid robots.

Key words: human locomotion, overcoming obstacle, walking gait, biped robot, motion capture