Identification of time-varying intrinsic and reflex joint stiffness.

We have developed a time-varying, parallel- cascade system identification algorithm to separate joint stiffness into intrinsic and reflex components at each point in time throughout rapid movements. The components are identified using an iterative algorithm in which intrinsic and reflex dynamics are identified using separate time-varying (TV) techniques based on ensemble methods. An ensemble of input-output records having the same TV behavior is acquired and used to identify the system dynamics as impulse response functions at time increments corresponding to the sampling interval. Simulation studies showed that the time-varying, parallel-cascade algorithm performed well under realistic conditions with 99.9% VAF between simulated and predicted torque. To evaluate the performance of the algorithm under realistic conditions we applied it to an ensemble of experimental data acquired under stationary conditions. Results demonstrated that the TV estimates converged to those of the established time-invariant algorithm and allowed us to determine how variance of the TV estimates varied with the number of realizations in the ensemble.