Kinematic analysis of the human body during sit-to-stand in healthy young adults

Sit-to-stand (STS) motion is one of the most important and energy-consuming basic motions in everyday life. Kinematic analysis provides information regarding what strategy or motion pattern is used by the healthy people, and through which, we can understand and obtain the law of the STS motion. The objective of this article is to study the law of STS motion through the experiment to determine a suitable description of STS motion in healthy adults, so as to provide a starting point and bases for future design and control of STS assistive devices. Thirty healthy adult subjects participated in this study and carried out STS motion experiment of standing up naturally. The STS motions were recorded using a high-definition camera. The experimentally collected kinematic data and a link segment model of the human body were used to obtain the coordinates of joints and to calculate the coordinates, velocity, and momentum of center of gravity; the postures of human body during STS are also obtained. The relationship between human body parameters and motion parameters is analyzed by using Pearson correlation method. The STS motion is divided into 4 phases; the phases are differentiated in terms of STS motion characteristics and postures, and momentum of center of gravity of human body. The main factors determining the differences in STS motion among individuals are horizontal distance between hip joint and ankle joint, lower leg length, thigh length, and the length of the transition period. The horizontal distance between hip joint and ankle joint is positively correlated with the duration from motion begin to trunk stops flexing forward (P = .021 < .05), but not so with the duration from motion begin to the end of phase 2 (P = .15 > .05). The results suggest that when designing the sit-to-stand assistive devices, one should pay attention to the whole-body posture control in STS motion, such as the posture guidance of trunk and lower leg, and should carry out specific training according to different STS phases. Sit-to-stand assistive devices should provide the same horizontal distance between hip joint and ankle joint for different individuals during the STS motion. Transition period should be properly controlled, and the degree of freedom of the lower leg should not be limited.