Event:

Walking is a context-dependent activity, yet the effect of context on walking is still poorly understood. This is unfortunate because limitations in walking are often revealed in more challenging situational and environmental contexts than typically assessed in the lab or clinic. In fact, most walking-related falls are caused by trips, slips and misplaced steps following unsuccessful interactions with environmental context (e.g., obstacles, puddles, uneven terrain), attributed to hurrying too much or being distracted (i.e., situational context). Our understanding of walking and the sensitivity by which walking limitations can be identified is hampered because situational and environmental context conditions are not an integral part of walking assessments. In this colloquium, I will introduce the conceptual framework needed to study walking as a context-dependent activity along with augmented-reality and mixed-reality applications that we have developed to study, assess and train context-dependent walking.