Does ankle push-off correct for errors in anterior-posterior foot placement relative to center-of-mass states?

I.Understanding the mechanisms humans use to stabilize walking is vital for predicting falls in elderly. Modeling studies identified two potential mechanisms to stabilize gait in the anterior-posterior direction: foot placement control and ankle push-off control: Foot placement depends on position and velocity of the center-of-mass (CoM) and push-off modulates with deviations between actual and predicted CoM trajectories. While both control mechanisms have been reported in humans, it is unknown whether especially the latter one is employed in unperturbed steady-state walking. On the one hand, the covariance between CoM states and anterior-posterior foot placement served as a measure of foot placement control. On the other hand, we determined variations in ankle push-off as a function of differences between the actual foot placement and the one predicted from CoM states. We estimated the corresponding correlations and consider them indictors for push-off control based on foot placement errors. We found ankle push-off torque to be correlated to the foot placement error in 30 participants when walking at normal and slow speed, with mean correlation values of up to 0.45. Our study suggests that humans use a push-off strategy for correcting foot placement errors in steady-state walking.