How close to a pendulum is human upper limb movement during walking?

The aim of this work was to investigate how close to pendulum-like behaviour the periodic motion of the human upper limb (or upper extremity) is, during normal walking at a comfortable speed of locomotion. Twenty-five healthy young persons (males and females) participated in the experiment. Biomechanical testing was undertaken (mass and centre of mass of each segment of the total upper extremity). Participants were walking on a treadmill with a standardised velocity of 1.1 ms(-1) (comfortable speed for all of them). A video analysis system with Silicon software was used to measure the different angles of the arm and forearm. The theoretical period of motion and maximal angular velocity were computed for the centre of mass of the total upper limb from the measured phases of the arm swing and associated positional potential energies. Actual measured periods of motion, in comparison, represented a level of similarity to a lightly damped simple pendulum. Using this assumption, the "damping factor" was calculated from the ratio between theoretical and measured values. A vast majority of people exhibited an actual angular velocity exceeding the expected theoretical angular velocity calculated for a virtual pendulum of similar mass and length characteristics. This may be due to muscle forces that are contributing to the motion of the upper limb during walking rather than simple gravity force acting alone. The observed positional potential energy of the dominant limb was greater than that of the non-dominant limb for the vast majority of participants. © 2004 Published by Elsevier GmbH.