Research Spotlight: AMTI Instrumented Treadmill at the Ariel Fischer Lab, Technion

Where Precision Engineering Meets Gait Science

At the Ariel Fischer Lab at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, understanding how the human body moves — and why movement goes wrong — demands instrumentation that can keep pace with the complexity of the questions being asked. That's why the lab has integrated the AMTI Instrumented Treadmill into their biomechanics workflow, enabling simultaneous, high-resolution force and kinematic data collection during walking and running.

The AMTI Instrumented Treadmill

AMTI's split-belt instrumented treadmill is a research-grade platform designed specifically for gait analysis, rehabilitation research, and biomechanical assessment. Unlike conventional treadmills, it integrates two independent force plates — one per belt — allowing researchers to independently measure the ground reaction forces (GRFs) beneath each foot with every step.

Each force plate measures all six components of ground reaction force and moment: three forces (Fx, Fy, Fz) and three moments (Mx, My, Mz). This enables detailed analysis of propulsion, braking, and medio-lateral forces — critical for understanding gait symmetry, balance control, and locomotor adaptations. The system supports belt speeds from 0 to over 4 m/s, can be configured with incline, and integrates seamlessly with motion capture and EMG systems via analog outputs and hardware sync.

A standout feature of the AMTI treadmill platform is its rigid, low-profile construction, which minimizes mechanical noise and cross-talk between the two belts — ensuring that each force measurement accurately reflects the activity of a single limb, even during dynamic tasks at high speeds.

The Ariel Fischer Lab: Decoding Human Movement at the Technion

The Fischer BioMotion Lab at the Technion's Faculty of Biomedical Engineering focuses on the biomechanics of human locomotion, musculoskeletal health, and wearable biomedical devices. Led by Dr. Arielle Fischer, the lab combines state-of-the-art instrumentation — including MRI-based joint mapping, gait analysis, and inertial measurement systems — with computational modeling to address both fundamental and clinical questions about how people walk, run, and recover from injury.

A particular focus of the lab is translational orthopedics: understanding soft tissue injuries and joint pathologies such as osteoarthritis in soldiers and young athletes, and developing sensor technologies and wearable devices to improve joint rehabilitation and prevent long-term damage. Dr. Fischer is also a member of the Israel Olympic Research Committee, applying biomechanical analysis to support elite athletic performance.

The AMTI instrumented treadmill is central to this mission. It enables continuous, steady-state gait analysis under controlled and perturbed conditions — without the spatial constraints of a fixed force plate walkway. This makes it ideal for long-duration protocols, bilateral asymmetry studies, and perturbation-based balance training experiments that require many consecutive strides of high-quality force data.

Supporting Israeli Biomechanics Research

The installation of the AMTI treadmill at one of Israel's leading biomedical engineering faculties reflects the growing demand for precision instrumentation in human movement research. As experimental protocols grow more ambitious — spanning split-belt adaptation, fatigue analysis, and real-time biofeedback paradigms — the tools must rise to meet them. NBT is proud to support this work at the Technion and looks forward to following the science that emerges from the Fischer BioMotion Lab.