Background: Stair descent analysis has been typically limited to laboratory staircases of 4 or 5 steps. To date there has been no report of gait parameters during unconstrained stair descent outside of the laboratory, and few motion capture datasets are publicly available.
Research question: We aim to collect a dataset and perform gait analysis for stair descent outside of the laboratory. We aim to measure basic kinematic and kinetic gait parameters and foot placement behavior.
Methods: We present a public stair descent dataset from 101 unimpaired participants aged 18-35 on an unconstrained 13-step staircase collected using wearable sensors. The dataset consists of kinematics (full-body joint angle and position), kinetics (plantar normal forces, acceleration), and foot placement for 30,609 steps.
Results: We report the lower limb joint angle ranges (30° and 8° for hip flexion and extension, 85° and -11° for knee flexion and extension, and 31° and 28° for ankle dorsi- and plantar-flexion). The self-selected speed was 0.79 ± 0.16 m/s, with cycle duration of 0.97 ± 0.18 s. Mean foot overhang as a percentage of foot length was 17.07 ± 6.66 %, and we calculate that foot size explains only 6% of heel placement variation, but 79% of toe placement variation. We also find a minor but significant asymmetry between left and right maximum hip flexion angle, though all other measured parameters were symmetrical.
Significance: This is the first quantitative observation of gait data from a large number (n = 101) of participants descending an unconstrained staircase outside of a laboratory. This study enables analysis of gait characteristics including self-selected walking speed and foot placement to better understand typical stair gait behavior. The dataset is a public resource for understanding typical stair descent.
Keywords: Biomechanics; Foot placement; Gait; Stair descent; Wearables.
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