A force-based approach for joint efforts estimation during the double support phase of gait

There is a growing interest in predicting the gait motion of real subjects under virtual conditions, e.g. to anticipate the result of surgery or to help in the design of prosthetic/orthotic devices. To this end, the motion parameters can be considered as the design parameters of an optimization problem. In this context, determination of the joint efforts for a given motion is a required step for the subsequent evaluation of cost function and constraints, but force plates will not exist. Therefore, a force-based approach is proposed to estimate the joint efforts during the whole gait, including the double support phase.