Local gait dynamic stability of individuals with knee brace and ankle brace

Over the past few decades, many attempts were made to model human gait for both clinical and general purposes with focus on gait normality, gait stability and gait asymmetry. This paper aims to investigate human local dynamic stability during normal walking and walking with knee brace and ankle brace. This study uses Maximum Lyapunov Exponent (MLE) to investigate how knee and ankle brace affects a person´s natural dynamic gait stability. Results obtained from the experiment conducted on 8 healthy subjects are satisfactory. Significant differences were observed when the participant walked with and without knee brace and ankle brace. However, further experiment needs to be conducted to further examine the relationship between local stability and global stability when a person walks with and without knee brace and ankle brace.