The Influence of Treadmill on Postural Control

When people walk on a treadmill, significant differences exist in postural control if compared to walking on the ground. In this paper, a method combining linear and nonlinear analysis is proposed to evaluate the walking postural control ability. In this method, the movements of the upper body and the feet are analyzed separately, because these parts have more capacity to reflect the characteristics of people’s gait. On this basis, the linear and nonlinear indicators of each part are analyzed, and the postural control ability is evaluated. The method is validated by three healthy subjects walking on both the treadmill and the ground. In treadmill walking case, the results show a smaller upper trunk acceleration (UTa) in the anterior-posterior (AP) direction. In the foot movement analysis, there are significant differences in the performance indexes related to the center of pressure (CoP) when people are walking on the treadmill and the ground. When walking on the treadmill, the velocity, acceleration, and jerk of the CoP in the AP direction are smaller than those in the ground walking case. Besides, when people walk on treadmills at uniform speeds, their feet accelerate is less in the vertical direction, and they have shorter stride length (SL) and longer stride time (ST). These results suggest that people have better postural control when walking on a treadmill. This method can be used as a means of assessing people’s behavior when walking on various situations by evaluating their control posture ability.