The Effects of Ship’s Roll Motion on the Center of Mass and Margin of Stability During Walking: A Simulation Study

Walking strategies in an unstable environment like a ship differ from walking on stable ground. Extreme ship motions may endanger the safety of the crews. Notably, a loss of balance on board can lead to an injury or an accident of falling off a ship. Keeping one’s balance on board a ship is strongly influenced by the ship’s motion. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine how walking on a ship differs from walking in a stable environment and explore the effects of the ship’s roll motion on balance control and stability while walking in sea environments. We hypothesized that step time variability, center of mass (COM), and margin of stability (MOS) would significantly differ between stable and unstable walking conditions. We also hypothesized that there would be an effect of rolling cycles and angles on increasing step time variability, COM excursion, and MOS variability. We recruited 30 healthy individuals between 21 and 39 years old for this study. Participants walked for two minutes at their self-selected speeds during the study with and without rolling on a computer-assisted rehabilitation environment (CAREN) system. The CAREN system was used to simulate the parametric roll motion of ships up to 20 degrees. This study quantified step time variability, peak COM excursion, and MOS variability in different rolling conditions. We found a significant difference in step time variability (p < 0.001), lateral peak COM excursion (p < 0.001), and MOS variability (p < 0.001) between waking on land and walking at sea.