Article

For maintaining heading direction while walking we heavily rely on vision.
Therefore, walking in the absence of vision or with visual attention directed
elsewhere potentially leads to dangerous situations. Here we investigated whether
tactile information from the feet can be used as a (partial) substitute for
vision in maintaining a stable heading direction. If so, participants should be
better able to keep a constant heading direction on tactile pavement that
indicates directionality than on regular flat pavement. However, such a pavement
may also be destabilizing. Thus we asked participants to walk straight ahead on
regular pavement, and on tactile pavement (tiles with ridges along the walking
direction) while varying the amount of vision. We assessed the effects of the
type of pavement as well as the amount of vision on the variability of the
heading direction as well as gait stability. Both of these measures were
calculated from accelerations and angular velocities recorded from a smartphone
attached to the participants trunk. Results showed that on tactile pavement
participants had a less variations in their heading direction than on regular
pavement. The drawback, however, was that the tactile pavement used in this study
decreased gait stability. In sum, tactile pavement can be used as a partial
substitute for vision in maintaining heading direction, but it can also decrease
gait stability. Future work should focus on designing tactile pavement that does
provided directional clues, but is less destabilizing.
CI - Copyright (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS