Center of Mass in Response to Walking Perturbations Scales with Perturbation Difficulty

Zoe Moore*, Daniel J. Liss and Jessica L. Allen, Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26505

Field (Broad Category): Engineering (Physical Sciences & Engineering) 

Student’s Major: Biomedical Engineering 

Maintaining balance in response to disturbances to walking is important for daily life. For an individual to maintain their balance, their center of mass (CoM) needs to remain within their base of support. The base of support consists of all of the points of contact between the feet and the ground. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between locomotor disturbances of varying difficulty and CoM position during walking. We expect that the deviation in CoM position will increase with increasing perturbation difficulty. Five healthy young adults walked on a dual-belt treadmill at their self-selected speed while a) walking normally and b) experiencing disturbances to their balance of varying difficulty. Body motion was collected using reflective markers that were placed on the participants at known locations. Peak CoM position during each step cycle were calculated for both the antero-posterior and mediolateral directions. The CoM position during the gait cycles in which a balance challenge occurred was compared to the average CoM position from the control. The deviation of the CoM from the control increased in both directions as perturbation difficulty increased. Future studies will include the aging population to understand if CoM deviation is a key parameter to fall risk. 

Funding: NIH NIGMS. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. 

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: My efforts were mainly voluntary.