Biomechanical Analysis in the Sagittal Plane at Different Walking Speeds During Stair Climbing Walking speed is an important parameter affecting the biomechanical characteristics of lower extremity joints during stair climbing. This study provides the investigations of sagittal plane biomechanics analysis of lower extremity joint for three specified walking speeds. Eight normal subjects participated. The three specified speeds were 0.35ms, 0.5ms and 0.65ms. The result of this study showed that there were obvious differences in joint angle, moment and power with the change of walking speed. These differences indicated the changes of motion of the center of mass and joint energy distribution when the walking speed changed. With the increase of walking speed, the trajectory of the center of mass changed from first falling slightly then rising and finally falling to always rising during a step, and was getting closer and closer to a straight line. The proportion of energy produced by hip and ankle joint increased and the proportion of energy produced by knee joint decreased when the walking speed increased. The conclusion of this paper will contribute to the research of human movement science or the movement control of humanoid robot.

Inertial SensorBased Lower Limb Joint Kinematics: A Methodological Systematic Review. The use of inertial measurement units (IMUs) has gained popularity for the estimation of lower limb kinematics. However, implementations in clinical practice are still lacking. The aim of this review is twofoldxe2x80x94to evaluate the methodological requirements for IMUbased joint kinematic estimation to be applicable in a clinical setting, and to suggest future research directions. Studies within the PubMed, Web Of Science and EMBASE databases were screened for eligibility, based on the following inclusion criteria: (1) studies must include a methodological description of how kinematic variables were obtained for the lower limb, (2) kinematic data must have been acquired by means of IMUs, (3) studies must have validated the implemented method against a golden standard reference system. Information on study characteristics, signal processing characteristics and study results was assessed and discussed. This review shows that methods for lower limb joint kinematics are inherently application dependent. Sensor restrictions are generally compensated with biomechanically inspired assumptions and prior information. Awareness of the possible adaptations in the IMUbased kinematic estimates by incorporating such prior information and assumptions is necessary, before drawing clinical decisions. Future research should focus on alternative validation methods, subjectspecific IMUbased biomechanical joint models and disturbed movement patterns in realworld settings.