STEPPING RESPONSE DURING CONSTRAINED AND UNCONSTRAINED STANDING IN MOVING ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the differences in human stepping response reaction between constrained and unconstrained standing while being exposed to simulated wave-induced platform motions. Twenty subjects (10 male and 10 female), with limited experience recreating or working in motion-rich environments, performed a constrained and an unconstrained standing task on a six-degrees-of-freedom motion bed while being exposed to two different simulated platform motion conditions. Stepping occurrence was greater during unconstrained standing than constrained standing during all three motion conditions. However, no significant differences in platform kinematics were found between stepping cases. These results suggest that stepping occurs more frequently than originally hypothesized. As such, stepping should not be considered as a last resource when all fixed-support options have been exhausted. This should be taken into consideration to ensure ecological validity when developing models to predict stepping occurrence.