Darmstadt stair ambulation dataset including level walking, stair ascent, stair descent and gait transitions at three stair heights

The Darmstadt stair ambulation dataset was collected to improve the control and assistance of wearable lower limb robotics. It contains the kinematics, kinetics and electromyographic data (EMG) for transitions between level walking and stair ascent, and between stair ascent and level walking. Further, it contains the data for transitions in between level walking and stair descent, and between stair descent and level walking. Twelve physically unimpaired male subjects with a mean age of 25.4 yrs and a mean weight of 74.6 kg participated in the experiments. A motion capture system was used to capture the body kinematics. Seven force plates were used in two setups to collect the ground reaction forces of eleven strides for the stair ascent and of eleven strides for the stair descent transitions. The center of pressure, the center of mass, joint angles and angular velocities were determined. Further, inverse dynamics were used to determine the lower limb joint moments and the lower limb joint power. Sixteen EMG sensors were used to collect the muscle activity of twelve muscles. As each EMG sensor also contains an inertial measurement unit (IMU), including 3D-Gyroscope, 3D-Accelerometer and 3D-Magnetometer, they were also used to capture the lower limb kinematics in parallel to the motion capture system. Stair ambulation was performed at three stair slopes. The data is provided at different processing levels including raw to fully processed data. The attached documentation will provide details about the data acquisition, the data processing and the provided data structure and format.