Stability of a double inverted pendulum model during human quiet stance with continuous delay feedback control

Abstract

Recent debate about neural mechanisms for stabilizing human upright quiet stance focuses on whether the active and time delay neural feedback control generating muscle torque is continuous or intermittent. A single inverted pendulum controlled by the active torque actuating the ankle joint has often been used for the debate on the presumption of well-known ankle strategy hypothesis claiming that the upright quiet stance can be stabilized mostly by the ankle torque. However, detailed measurements are showing that the hip joint angle exhibits amount of fluctuations comparable with the ankle joint angle during natural postural sway. Here we analyze a double inverted pendulum model during human quiet stance to demonstrate that the conventional proportional and derivative delay feedback control, i.e., the continuous delay PD control with gains in the physiologically plausible range is far from adequate as the neural mechanism for stabilizing human upright quiet stance.