Characterisation of input parameter influence on dynamic orbital stability of walking

Still in literature there is no consensus on how to define or quantify locomotor stability. Nevertheless, locomotor stability represents an important issue in clinical assessment procedures. Orbital stability analysis applied to biomechanics (and in particular to walking) can help reaching such definition, but still this technique is deemed to be controversial, possibly because of the lack of a standard implementation. The aim of this study was to analyse the influence of the number of analysed gait cycles and of the experimental measurement noise on the orbital stability analysis outcomes (maximum Floquet multipliers). In-silico and experimental analysis were conducted on acceleration data. The number of cycles included in the analysis strongly influenced the stability result, while simulated experimental noise did not affect maximum Floquet multipliers. Experimental analysis generally confirmed these results, showing similar trends.