The Variable Stiffness Treadmill 2: Development and Validation of a Unique Tool to Investigate Locomotion on Compliant Terrains

Understanding legged locomotion in various environments is valuable for many fields, including robotics, biomechanics, rehabilitation, and motor control. Specifically, investigating legged locomotion in compliant terrains has recently been gaining interest for the robust control of legged robots over natural environments. At the same time, the importance of ground compliance has also been highlighted in poststroke gait rehabilitation. Currently, there are not many ways to investigate walking surfaces of varying stiffness. This article introduces the variable stiffness treadmill (VST) 2, an improvement of the first version of the VST, which was the first treadmill able to vary belt stiffness. In contrast to the VST 1, the device presented in this paper (VST 2) can reduce the stiffness of both belts independently, by generating vertical deflection instead of angular, while increasing the walking surface area from 0.20 m² to 0.74 m². In addition, both treadmill belts are now driven independently, while high-spatial-resolution force sensors under each belt allow for measurement of ground reaction forces and center of pressure. Through validation experiments, the VST 2 displays high accuracy and precision. The VST 2 has a stiffness range of 13 kN/m to 1.5MN/m, error of less than 1%, and standard deviations of less than 2.2 kN/m, demonstrating its ability to simulate low-stiffness environments reliably. The VST 2 constitutes a drastic improvement of the VST platform, a one-of-its-kind system that can improve our understanding of human and robotic gait while creating new avenues of research on biped locomotion, athletic training, and rehabilitation of gait after injury or disease.