Running is a fundamental motion maneuver which allows humans to move. Through the study of archaeological remains some researchers suggest that running influenced evolution of humans. Today running is one of the most popular and affordable means of recreation. With increasing number of runners there is also increase in running related injuries. Mechanism for determining reasons for injuries are well understood. Unfortunately we are still not sure how to prevent those injuries therefore we have good motivation for creating our own instrumented treadmill.
In this thesis we have developed an upgrade for existing laboratory treadmill with which we were able to measure significant biomechanical parameters for gait analysis. Ground reaction forces were measured with four three dimensional force transducers JR3, for motion capture we used Optotrak. To ensure reliability of our custom instrumented treadmill we performed multiple evaluation tests.
One of our main goals is to determine the center of pressure on foot CoP, which is crucial for inverse Newton-Euler dynamic analysis. After calibration of our instrumented treadmill we compared calculated forces and moments in ankle joint and CoP on the shoe outsole with corresponding forces, moments and CoP gathered from force plate. The results show that with developed instrumented treadmill we can measure the CoP and forces accurately with some restrictions.
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