Interpersonal interaction between the gait of two humans.

(A) Cooperative walking. Two humans walk together with interpersonally synchronized gait rhythms. (B) Emulation of interpersonal interaction using an interactive rhythmic cue. The Walk-Mate system emulates the gait rhythm of one of the two humans. The system’s gait rhythm is generated through interpersonal interaction with the human gait rhythm. (C) CONSORT flowchart of the current study, based on the website http://www.consort-statement.org/. (D) Model of rhythm generation. The model has a hierarchical structure, in which two dynamics were mutually constrained. The model details are described in [8]. (E) Experimental setup. Subjects wear foot sensors and headphones. The foot sensors are pressure sensors for gathering data on the time stamp of each step in the subject’s gait, which are sent to a personal computer (PC). Headphones then provide the interactive rhythmic cue generated in the PC based on the rhythm generation model.