Towards the development of a wearable skin to limit high joint contact forces: Analysis of muscle co-contraction in lower extremities

Age-related joint degeneration is a burden for the patients, their families, and the entire healthcare system. Cartilage disappearance may arise from disturbed muscle activation patterns, which lead to excessive co-contractions and thus higher-than-normal joint contact forces. To develop a wearable skin to correct these imbalances, a comprehensive model that can predict joint wear using noninvasive measurements such as gait asymmetry, ground pressure distributions, and EMG signals is needed. As a first step towards this goal, we quantified muscle co-contractions of healthy young subjects during gait.