Biomechanics of Walking and Running

Sport Biomechanics

Lab report 1

Use kinematics to show three differences between walking and running.

Gerdi Brits

08032246

16 September 2011

Introduction

Running and walking are significantly different in many ways, apart from the obvious difference of getting from A to B faster, using much more energy when running or being less energy efficient when running, kinematics can also be used to determine differences in angular velocity or angular acceleration of a selected point in the body. The purpose of this report is to show just three of the many differences between walking and running.

Methods

Videos of running and walking were run through the program MaxTRAQ marking the points of the toe, heel, ankle, knee, hip and pelvis digitising the data. The data was also scaled appropriately.

Next the data was to be converted into linear and angular variables to enable motion to be described. The linear kinematics required is position, velocity, and acceleration. The angular kinematics needed is angular position, angular velocity and angular acceleration. The angular data will give the relative and absolute angles.

Before the data is transformed into linear and angular kinematics it is first filtered and smoothed out using a 10 Hz cut off.

In order to interpret the data easier the data needs to be converted into graph form so comparisons can be made

The three factors which will be investigated are:

* Speed

* Duty factor

* Angular acceleration of the ankle

Results

Speed

As can be seen from the results the speed for running is faster than the speed for walking. The distance between figure one and figure two is 2.67 m and the times elapsed was 0.93s. This gives the speed of 2.41m/s. The distance between figure three and four is 1.58m and the time it took to get from three to four was 1.14s, this gives a speed of 1.38m/s

Running

Figure 2: Runninfg toe off again

Figure 1: Running toe off

0.7230-0.003 = 0.72...