Stabilizing postural control for emulated human balancing systems

Human suffering from vertiginous might experience their body tilting and may eventually fall over. The analytical understanding and applications of human posture control could possibly be extended to understand the postural sway. On the basis of a simplified human body model with two stiff segments and articulation at the hip and ankle, this paper presents a two stage feedback control law for assisting balance in the human’s standing posture under interference of subjective verticals. A robust control law is developed from a control-theoretical point of view to guarantee posture stability under disturbances caused by vertigo. In understanding the task of posture control feedback, the control theory based on the human model could be a source of inspiration to physiologists for physiological modeling and understanding of complex mechanical and neurological interactions. The results developed are to be used as a basis for stance posture control of bionic robots and motion-aid robots.