Biomechanical Analysis of (Non-)Isometric Virtual Walking of Older Adults

Our study investigates the effects of (non-)isometric mappings between physical movements and virtual motions in the virtual environment (VE) on walking biomechanics of older adults. Three primary domains (pace, base of support and phase) of spatio-temporal and temporo-phasic parameters were used to evaluate gait performance. Our results show similar results in pace and phasic domains when older adults walk in the VE in the isometric mapping condition compared to the corresponding parameters in the real world. We found significant differences in base of support for our user group between walking in the VE and real world. For non-isometric mappings we found an increased divergence of gait parameters in all domains correlating with the up- or down-scaled velocity of visual self-motion feedback.

@InProceedings\{JLSBGP17a,
  author       = "Janeh, Omar and Langbehn, Eike and Steinicke, Frank and Bruder, Gerd and Gulberti, Alessandro and Poetter-Nerger, Monika",
  title        = "Biomechanical Analysis of (Non-)Isometric Virtual Walking of Older Adults",
  booktitle    = "Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality (VR) (Poster Presentation)",
  pages        = "217--218",
  year         = "2017",
  url          = "http://basilic.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/Publications/2017/JLSBGP17a"
}