Data from: Gait coordination in overground walking with a virtual reality avatar

Little information is currently available on interpersonal gait
synchronisation in overground walking. This is caused by difficulties in
continuous gait monitoring over many steps while ensuring repeatability of
experimental conditions. These challenges could be overcome by utilising
immersive virtual reality (VR), assuming it offers ecological validity. To
this end, this study provides some of the first evidence of gait
coordination patterns for overground walking dyads in VR. Six subjects
covered the total distance of 27 km while walking with a pacer. The pacer
was either a real human subject or their anatomically and biomechanically
representative VR avatar driven by an artificial intelligence algorithm.
Side-by-side and front-to-back arrangements were tested without and with
the instruction to synchronise steps. Little evidence of spontaneous gait
coordination was found in both visual conditions, but persistent gait
coordination patterns were found in the case of intentional
synchronisation. Front-to-back rather than side-by-side arrangement
consistently yielded in the latter case higher mean synchronisation
strength index. Although the mean magnitude of synchronisation strength
index was overall comparable in both visual conditions when walking under
the instruction to synchronise steps, quantitative and qualitative
differences were found which might be associated with common limitations
of VR solutions.