• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.883-884
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• 2008

• 한국체육학회지인문사회과학편
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.643-655
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate biomechanical differences between young and old adults during downhill walking on a treadmill in order to understand the mechanisms of elderly falls. Eighteen healthy young females(YG: yrs: 21.17±1.5) and eighteen healthy old females(OG: yrs: 66.67±1.33) participated in this study. They were asked to walk at their preferred speed on a treadmill at level, 7.5° and 15° decline. OG walked more wobbly in the medial and lateral directions than YG(p<.05). As slope got steeper, OG had smaller ROM(range of motion) of ankle and knee joints compared with YG. However, there was no difference in ROM of the hip between OG and YG, but maximum extension angle of OG was smaller compared with YG(p<.05). Smaller extensor moment was generated on OG during downhill walking(p<.05). It was hypothesized that more risk factors would be found on older people compared to young people during downhill. However, older people actually walks with a safer strategy compared to young people during downhill. Finally, current findings about biomechanical characteristics of elderly walking would provide useful fundamental information for a follow-up study regarding the prevention of elderly fall during their daily life.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.15-27
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• 2022

An omnidirectional VR treadmill is a highly-immersive walking simulator that allows identical body movements, such as walking, running, and sitting. However, the operation difficulty of an omnidirectional VR treadmill may cause data reliability problems. Therefore, this study aims to verify the effectiveness of a VR treadmill by comparing the ability to orient in the real and virtual worlds spatially. For this purpose, a rotating and searching path experiment was conducted with participants. This experiment showed that there was no statistically significant difference in the ability of the participants to orient in the real and virtual worlds spatially. In addition, the omnidirectional VR treadmill requires an adaptation time for the users due to the difficulty in the treadmill operation. However, there was no significant difference in the difficulty felt by the participants according to the adaptation time. Hence, these findings supported the possibility of collecting realistic walking data without safety concerns through an omnidirectional VR treadmill. Furthermore, this treadmill could be used in future research to solve problems directly related to pedestrian safety, such as the interaction between vehicles and pedestrians.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.319-329
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper is to analyze lower extremities pattern of daily activities and walking on the treadmill with passive body support system. The experiments will be used for basic research of developing active harness system. The experimental procedure has been validated on 5 healthy male subjects and we measured foot pressure and 8 section of lower limb muscles activities. The EMG results of ADL indicate that there have specific muscle activity patterns followed by each activities. The vastus lateralis muscle activities were highly seems on the activities that requires flection and extension of knee joint. The foot pressure value of stair descent activity was the highest due to the fact that it is come down to the direction of gravity. The results with the passive body weight support percentages show that the EMG and foot pressure values were declined according to increasement of the body weight support percentages. Therefore the body weight support system could apply gait rehabilitation system for various patients by changing the percentages of the body weight support.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.503-515
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• 2011

We developed a walking-assistance robot for walking rehabilitation and assessed the kinematic characteristics of a prototype. The walking-assistance robot is composed of hip, knee, and ankle joints, and each joint is driven by a motor with a decelerator. The equations of angular displacement while walking were derived by theoretically analyzing human locomotion, and the calculated angular displacements were then applied to the robot controller. The output angular displacement of each joint was measured and compared with its input angular displacement in walking experiments on a treadmill at various walking speeds and strides. The differences between the input and output angular displacements are 5.22% for the hip and 2.97% for the knee joints, and it has been confirmed that the walking-assistance robot works well.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.631-638
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• 2012

This work proposes a new method to generate velocity profile of a traction motor equipped in a rehabilitation system for knee joint patients through humanoid robot simulation. To this end, a three-dimensional full-body humanoid robot model is newly constructed, and natural human gait is simulated by applying to it reference joint angle trajectories already published. Linear velocity is derived from distance data calculated between the positions of a thigh band and its traction motor at every sampling instance, which is a novel idea of this paper. The projection rule is employed to kinematically describe the humanoid robot because of its high efficiency and accuracy, and measured joint trajectories are used in simulating human natural gait referring to Winter's book. The attained motor velocity profile for a certain position in human body will be applied to our walking-assistance system which is implemented with a treadmill system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.32 no.10
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• pp.885-890
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• 2015

Walking on split-belt treadmill has been applied to study walking disabilities, such as osteoarthritis (OA), to show asymmetric walking characteristics. In this study, we compared asymmetric walking in OA patients with healthy subjects under split-belt conditions and examined the reproduction of walking asymmetry in OA. Seven OA patients were instructed to walk at four frequencies, while four healthy subjects walked on a treadmill with tied-belt and split-belt conditions. To compare walking asymmetries, kinetic and kinematic measurements were made using force-plates and motion capture cameras, and subsequently center of mass (CoM) velocity, mechanical work and potential energy were calculated. Horizontal velocity change during split-belt walking of healthy subjects was similar to OA patients. Difference of mechanical work during single support phase occurred due to fall of CoM in fast belt. OA walking asymmetry could be reproduced by reducing differences of belt speeds to prevent rapid fall of CoM.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.44-53
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• 2004

Treadmill training is a new promising therapy in gait rehabilitation of patients with hemiplegia. The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of treadmill training on walking speed and gait endurance in patients with chronic hemiplegia. The subject of this includes twenty patients, who had suffered from chronic hemiplegia and were in the K rehabilitation center; each ten patients were randomly assigned to experimental or control group. Among twenty patients, one group of ten for experiment was treated with progressive speed increase treadmill ambulation traing besides conventional physical therapy(SITAT) while the rest ten for the controlled group was treated with conventional physical therapy(CPT) only, for 8 weeks alike. Before and after the foregoing 8 weeks training, walking velocity and gait endurance were measured to both groups. The data were analyzed by paired t-test. The results of this study are as follows; The SITAT and CPT showed the significant difference in walking velocity and gait endurance. As compared the rehabilitation of dependent varibles between the SITAT and CPT, SITAT showed the significant difference in walking velocity and gait endurance. The outcome suggest that patient with chronic hemiplegia can improve their walking velocity and gait endurance throught treadmill training.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.39-43
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• 2013

In this paper, we present a effective method of gait rehabilitation training using critical point of median frequency in muscle fatigue analysis using EMG. To target the five healthy volunteers, EMG signal were measured in the quadriceps femoris muscle and the tibialis anterior muscle in order to determine muscle fatigue. We performed a test targeting three adult male for 30 minutes on a treadmill at a speed of 6km/h same. EMG signal analysis in frequency and median frequency is calculated to quantification of muscle fatigue, and calculated the critical point which is saturated by muscle fatigue during 30 minutes. We set saturated point the threshold which muscle can withstand. The results of this paper, we are able to quantify the threshold of the muscle.

• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.159-166
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to develop and automatic gait event detection algorithm using single accelerometer which is attached at the top of the shoe. The sinal vector magnitude and anterior-posterior(x-axis) directional component of accelerometer were used to detect heel strike(HS) and toe off(TO), respectively. To evaluate proposed algorithm, gait event timing was compared with that by force plate and kinematic data. In experiment, 7 subjects performed 10 trials level walking with 3 different walking conditions such as fast, preferred & slow walking. An accelerometer, force plate and 3D motion capture system were used during experiment. Gait event by force plate was used as reference timing. Results showed that gait event by accelerometer is similar to that by force plate. The distribution of differences were spread about $22.33{\pm}17.45m$ for HS and $26.82{\pm}14.78m$ for To and most error was existed consistently prior to 20ms. The difference between gait event by kinematic data and developed algorithm was small. Thus it can be concluded that developed algorithm can be used during outdoor walking experiment. Further study is necessary to extract gait spatial variables by removing gravity factor.