Human Postural Response to Linear Perturbation

Human postural responses appeared to have stereotyped modality, such as ankle mode, knee mode and hip mode in response to various perturbations. We examined whether human postural control gain of full-state feedback could be decoupled along with the eigenvector. To verify the model, postural responses subjected to fast backward perturbation were used. Upright posture was modeled as 3-segment inverted pendulum incorporated with feedback control, and joint torques were calculated using inverse dynamics. Postural modalities such as ankle, knee and hip mode were obtained from eigenvectors of biomechanical model. As oppose to the full-state feedback control, independent eigenvector control assumes that modal control input is determined by the linear combination of corresponding modality. We used optimization method to obtain and compare the feedback gains for both independent eigenvector control and full-state feedback control. As a result, we found that simulation result of eigenvector feedback was not competitive in comparison with that of full-state feedback control. This implies that the CNS would make use of full-state body information to generate compensative joint torques.