Identification of heel strike under a slippery condition.

Kinematics at heel strike instant (HSI) has been used to quantify slip severity. However, methods to identify HSI remain ambiguous and have not been evaluated under slippery conditions. A glass force plate was used to observe the contact interface between shoe and floor under slippery conditions. HSIs identified from the video captured beneath the force plate and from the force plate and kinematics were compared. The results showed that HSIs identified with the video were closer to those identified with the normal force threshold (NFT) (9.0 ms ± 5.5 ms) than were most of those identified with kinematics. Slips with a longer distance travelled between NFT HSI and video HSI had a larger heel horizontal velocity (>0.8 m/s) and a smaller foot angular velocity (<100deg/s) at the NFT instant, and were still part of the forward swing. The results show that improved methods are needed over NFT to identify HSI, especially under slippery conditions.