• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.10 no.12
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• pp.3833-3838
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• 2009

This paper introduces a measurement system for mechanical properties of sport shoes using an industrial robot. The robot system used in this paper is a commercial Puma type robot system(FARA AT2 made by SAMSUNG Electronics) with 6 joints and the end-effector is modified to produce a human walking motion. After analyzing human walking with a high speed video camera, each joint angle of the robot system is extracted to be used in the robot system. By using this system, ground impact forces were measured during stepping motion with 3 different shoe specimens made of 3 different hardness outsoles, respectively. As other mechanical properties, both bending moments to bend the toe part of the same specimen shoes and pronation quantities during walking motion were measured as well. In the impact test with the same depth of deformation under the ground level, the effect of the outsole hardness was clearly appeared such that the harder outsole produces the higher ground reaction force. The bending test and the pronation test also show proportional increments in the bending stiffness and the moment Mx according to the outsole hardness. Throughout such experiments, the robot system has produced consistent results so that the system could be used in obtaining valuable informations for a shoe designing process.