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Cited by 594

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 29 of the 29 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Running in the real world: adjusting leg stiffness for different surfaces

Open access
Ferris, Daniel P., Louie, Micky, Farley, Claire T.·1998·Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences

Abstract

A running animal coordinates the actions of many muscles, tendons, and ligaments in its leg so that the overall leg behaves like a single mechanical spring during ground contact. Experimental observations have revealed that an animal's leg stiffness is independent of both speed and gravity level, suggesting that it is dictated by inherent musculoskeletal properties. However, if leg stiffness was invariant, the biomechanics of running (e.g. peak ground reaction force and ground contact time) would change when an animal encountered different surfaces in the natural world. We found that human runners adjust their leg stiffness to accommodate changes in surface stiffness, allowing them to maintain similar running mechanics on different surfaces. These results provide important insight into mechanics and control of animal locomotion and suggest that incorporating an adjustable leg stiffness in the design of hopping and running robots is important if they are to match the agility and speed of animals on varied terrain.

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Crossref · 10.1098/rspb.1998.0388

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Metadata

Authors
Ferris, D. P., Louie, M., & Farley, C. T.
Venue
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
Published
1998-06-07
Volume
265
Issue
1400
Pages
989-994
ISSN
  • 0080-4649 (ISSN-L)
  • 0962-8452
  • 1471-2954
OpenAlex
W2120085742
Cited by
594
References
29
FWCI
4.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Running in the real world: adjusting leg stiffness for different surfaces. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1098/rspb.1998.0388
The paper
Ferris, D. P., Louie, M., & Farley, C. T. (1998). Running in the real world: adjusting leg stiffness for different surfaces. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1998.0388

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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