Effect of Dual-Tasks Walking on Human Gait Patterns

A human gait pattern conformed to the law of the inverted pendulum and could be described by the movement of its center of mass (COM). A sinusoidal function based on an inverted pendulum was used to plan the COM trajectory of humanoid robots for gait control. Therefore, studying the human dual-tasks gait pattern is essential for improving the gait adaptability of humanoid robots. Many well-known humanoid robot prototypes can complete stable walking, running, jumping, and other movements closely mimicking human beings. This study provides a theoretical reference for the gait planning and design of humanoid robots by comparing differences in the stride time, cadence, step length, step width, stride length, walking speed and COM movement during single- and dual-tasks walking. Results showed no significant difference in the time parameters. In dual-tasks walking, the walking speeds decreased (P = 0.001) and the COM sidewise movement increased, indicating an enhancement in the automatic motion rhythm in cognitive tasks. Humans can easily select new different speeds to better adapt to the competition of attention resources. To enhance the adaptability of humanoid robots to the COM offset, the independent motion of the hip joint separated from the trunk and lower limbs must be considered in the robot design.