Leg Stiffness Increased with Gait Speed in the Elderly

Abstract

Compliant leg models have been widely accepted to explain the basic dynamics of walking and running [1]. Human walking were described as to modulate the apparent stiffness to optimize gait dynamics and energetic. The effective leg stiffness increased with gait speed to build up greater propulsion energy required before collision [2,3]. However, the previous study was demonstrated only on healthy young subjects, thus has not been shown to verify other subjects such as the elderly, who have slower gait speed than the young subjects. In this study, we extend an existing approach to an elderly group to examine how the leg stiffness would be correlated with the gait speed. A damped compliant walking model was used to calculate the leg stiffness of the elderly [2].