Abstract:
The project “Design and Development of a Portable Underwater Treadmill for Exercise for the Elderly” was researched to design and develop an underwater treadmill with a curved shape pavement for underwater exercise. By creating parts to attach to the swivel axis of the pavement to prevent the walkway from moving too quickly. The experiment involved four participants, each having their body composition measured and wearing markers to capture their walking using a motion capture camera. Each participant walked at a pace of 100 steps per minute, then the obtained data was analyzed with the AnyBody Modeling System, which uses inverse dynamics-based simulation principles to calculate vertical ground reaction force values. In this calculation, it is divided into two cases: 1) In the case of land and 2) In the case of the lower part of the body being submerged in water from the test results, it was found that in the case of walking on a curved treadmill while the lower body was submerged in water, the reaction force was found to be approximately 2-3% less than when walking on a curved treadmill on land. The results of both calculations two cases come from the curved treadmill walking patterns created in this project using the same data set for each subject.