Implementing overground turning on a linear treadmill

The purpose of treadmill-based locomotor training is to transfer walking skills obtained from training to real world walking (overground: OG). For optimal skill transfer, treadmill-based training should simulate OG as closely as possible. The constant speed of a standard treadmill encourages automaticity rather than engagement and fails to simulate the variable speeds encountered during OG walking. Our effort to overcome this limitation has focused on developing user-driven treadmill (UDT) velocity control schemes that allow the user to freely change walking speed and feel the same inertial force that they feel during OG walking. In this study, we have combined the user driven treadmill control with the virtual reality (VR) display to simulate realistic turning in a safe environment.