Determinants of pedestrian mediolateral foot placement in walking on laterally-oscillating structures
2024-08-15

Walking requires the integration of sensory information from different sensory modalities. Previously, it has been shown that when walking on laterally-oscillating structures, mediolateral foot placement depends on the mediolateral velocity of the centre of mass at the instance of foot placement. However, it was not known how the ground conditions and the visual environment affect the pedestrian stepping behaviour in this case. This important issue needs to be addressed as the stepping behaviour determines the magnitude of the lateral forces exerted by pedestrians on structures and is therefore critical for the assessment of lateral structural stability.

To address this issue, tests were conducted with six pedestrians walking on an instrumented treadmill capable of delivering lateral oscillatory motion. The visual environemnt was either that of the laboratory, or two virtual environemnts delivered via a head-mounted display differing with respect to the amount and type of available visual reference cues. Various combinations of the ground and visual conditions were used during the tests to gather the data on pedestrian stepping behaviour.

VR 1
VR2

Multilevel statistical modelling was used for data analysis to determine the influence of various predictor variables on the foot placement control law. Noteworthy, this is the first application of this technique in research on human-structure interaction. It was shown that the foot placement control law based on the mediolateral velocity of the centre of mass applies, and that the lateral structural motion or lack thereof and visual conditions modulate the step width in different ways.

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Bocian, M., Wdowicka, H., Burn, J.F., Macdonald, J.H.G., Determinants of pedestrian mediolateral foot placement in walking on laterally-oscillating structrues and their consequences for structural stability, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 222, 2025, 111793.