Gaze Fixation Comparisons Between Amputees and Able-bodied Individuals in Approaching Stairs and Level-ground Transitions: A Pilot Study

This paper aims to investigate the visual strategy of transtibial amputees while they are approaching the transition between level-ground and stairs and compare it with that of able-bodied individuals. To this end, we conducted a pilot study where two transtibial amputee subjects and two able-bodied subjects transitioned from level-ground to stairs and vice versa while wearing eye tracking glasses to record gaze fixations. To investigate how vision functioned to both populations for preparing locomotion on new terrains, gaze fixation behavior before the new terrains were analyzed and compared between two populations across all transition cases in the study. Our results presented that, unlike the able-bodied population, amputees had most of their fixations directed on the transition region prior to new terrains. Furthermore, amputees showed an increased need for visual information during transition regions before navigation on stairs than that before navigation onto level-ground. The insights about amputees’ visual behavior gained by the study may lead the future development of technologies related to the intention prediction and the locomotion recognition for amputees.