Estimating the Ambulatory Center of Mass during Load Carriage using a Geometric Approach

Luenin Barrios and Wei-Min Shen. Estimating the Ambulatory Center of Mass during Load Carriage using a Geometric Approach. In Proc. 2017 IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts, Austin, TX, USA, March 2017.

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Abstract

Research of load carriage effect on center of mass(CoM) behavior during human and robot locomotion has been driven by the prevalence of everyday tasks requiring load bearing or transfer. More recently, this has been accentuated in the design of exoskeletons and military backpack systems aimed at assisting with weighty load handling. Despite this importance, complicated body dynamics has stymied the study of CoM and locomotion behaviors that arise under heavy load carrying. Current approaches have focused mostly on force sensor use, video motion analysis or accelerometer data, constraining the methods to expensive and clumsy external sensors. In this work, a direct and accessible geometric approach is used and extended to produce CoM estimates of natural walking locomotion with carried loads over rough planar terrains. The approach makes use of an Optimized Geometric Hermite(OGH) curve and relies only on essential body kinematic knowledge, the terrain geometry, and load weight information. To validate the accuracy of the approach, comparisons using motion capture video of human subjects were performed. The results demonstrate an accurate estimate of the CoM position path and behavior during loaded natural walking over rough planar terrains.

BibTeX Entry

@InProceedings{barrios2017-Estimating-the-Ambulatory-Center-of-Mass-during-Load-Carriage-using-a-Geometric-Approach,
  abstract	= {Research of load carriage effect on center of mass(CoM) behavior during human and robot locomotion has been driven by the prevalence of everyday tasks requiring load bearing or transfer. More recently, this has been accentuated in the design of exoskeletons and military backpack systems aimed at assisting with weighty load handling. Despite this importance, complicated body dynamics has stymied the study of CoM and locomotion behaviors that arise under heavy load carrying. Current approaches have focused mostly on force sensor use, video motion analysis or accelerometer data, constraining the methods to expensive and clumsy external sensors. In this work, a direct and accessible geometric approach is used and extended to produce CoM estimates of natural walking locomotion with carried loads over rough planar terrains. The approach makes use of an Optimized Geometric Hermite(OGH) curve and relies only on essential body kinematic knowledge, the terrain geometry, and load weight information. To validate the accuracy of the approach, comparisons using motion capture video of human subjects were performed. The results demonstrate an accurate estimate of the CoM position path and behavior during loaded natural walking over rough planar terrains.},
  address	= {Austin, TX, USA},
  author	= {Luenin Barrios and Wei-Min Shen},
  booktitle	= arso-17,
  month = mar,
  title = {Estimating the Ambulatory Center of Mass during Load Carriage using a Geometric Approach},
  year = {2017}
}