TY - GEN
T1 - Second Spine
T2 - 5th IEEE RAS and EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, BioRob 2014
AU - Park, Joon Hyuk
AU - Zanotto, Damiano
AU - Vashista, Vineet
AU - Jin, Xin
AU - Stegall, Paul
AU - Agrawal, Sunil K.
PY - 2014/9/30
Y1 - 2014/9/30
N2 - The target of this work is to experimentally validate the Second Spine, a wearable device recently developed by our group to transfer forces from shoulder to pelvis during loaded walking. A key-feature of the Second Spine compared to traditional framed backpacks is the adjustable stiffness of its structure, which allows the wearer to change the loadbearing behavior of the device. In line with previous studies on loaded walking, we investigate biomechanical and physiological variables on a small group of young healthy subjects, as they walked on a treadmill under 3 different conditions: free walking, walking with a backpack of 25% of subject's Body Weight (BW), and walking with the same backpack while wearing the device. Results indicate that wearing the Second Spine significantly reduces the pressure on shoulders and induces smaller deviations from unloaded walking in terms of gait timing and stride length. The activations of the rectus femoris and the gastrocnemius muscles, along with the kinematics of the knee joint, provide indirect evidence that dynamic loads were rigidly transmitted from the shoulder to the waist. We discuss how these preliminary findings might be relevant for the prevention of injuries related to load carriage, and how they set important guidelines for the next generation of the Second Spine.
AB - The target of this work is to experimentally validate the Second Spine, a wearable device recently developed by our group to transfer forces from shoulder to pelvis during loaded walking. A key-feature of the Second Spine compared to traditional framed backpacks is the adjustable stiffness of its structure, which allows the wearer to change the loadbearing behavior of the device. In line with previous studies on loaded walking, we investigate biomechanical and physiological variables on a small group of young healthy subjects, as they walked on a treadmill under 3 different conditions: free walking, walking with a backpack of 25% of subject's Body Weight (BW), and walking with the same backpack while wearing the device. Results indicate that wearing the Second Spine significantly reduces the pressure on shoulders and induces smaller deviations from unloaded walking in terms of gait timing and stride length. The activations of the rectus femoris and the gastrocnemius muscles, along with the kinematics of the knee joint, provide indirect evidence that dynamic loads were rigidly transmitted from the shoulder to the waist. We discuss how these preliminary findings might be relevant for the prevention of injuries related to load carriage, and how they set important guidelines for the next generation of the Second Spine.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84918571928&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84918571928&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/biorob.2014.6913858
DO - 10.1109/biorob.2014.6913858
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84918571928
T3 - Proceedings of the IEEE RAS and EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics
SP - 689
EP - 694
BT - "2014 5th IEEE RAS and EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, BioRob 2014
A2 - Carloni, Raffaella
A2 - Masia, Lorenzo
A2 - Sabater-Navarro, Jose Maria
A2 - Ackermann, Marko
A2 - Agrawal, Sunil
A2 - Ajoudani, Arash
A2 - Artemiadis, Panagiotis
A2 - Bianchi, Matteo
A2 - Lanari Bo, Antonio Padilha
A2 - Casadio, Maura
A2 - Cleary, Kevin
A2 - Deshpande, Ashish
A2 - Formica, Domenico
A2 - Fumagalli, Matteo
A2 - Garcia-Aracil, Nicolas
A2 - Godfrey, Sasha Blue
A2 - Khalil, Islam S.M.
A2 - Lambercy, Olivier
A2 - Loureiro, Rui C. V.
A2 - Mattos, Leonardo
A2 - Munoz, Victor
A2 - Park, Hyung-Soon
A2 - Rodriguez Cheu, Luis Eduardo
A2 - Saltaren, Roque
A2 - Siqueira, Adriano A. G.
A2 - Squeri, Valentina
A2 - Stienen, Arno H.A.
A2 - Tsagarakis, Nikolaos
A2 - Van der Kooij, Herman
A2 - Vanderborght, Bram
A2 - Vitiello, Nicola
A2 - Zariffa, Jose
A2 - Zollo, Loredana
Y2 - 12 August 2014 through 15 August 2014
ER -