Design and Validation of a 3-DoF Wrist Perturbator Based on an Inverted Spatial Redundant 4-RUU Parallel Manipulator

Humans vary the stiffness in their joints depending on tasks and circumstances. For posture control a high joint stiffness is required to withstand perturbations, whereas for force control a low joint stiffness is required. To investigate how humans vary their joint stiffness precisely for moving an arm, a wearable device is needed that can...

Design and Validation of Ungrounded Wrist Perturbator Based On Parallel Mechanism

The compliance (stiffness) of a human arm varies, depending on the task at hand. Some precise tasks require high stiffness, while others need a level of flexibility to deal with unknown disturbances. To describe this human behaviour a portable device is needed to give small force perturbations (input) while the resulting reaction of the arm ...

Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures

Ergonomics of human workers is one of the key elements in design and evaluation of production processes. Human ergonomics have a major impact on productivity as well as chronic health risks incurred by inappropriate working postures and conditions. In this paper we propose a novel method for estimating and communicating the ergonomic work...

Identification of Spinal Reflexes

Visco-elasticity of joints is important for the maintenance of the human body posture and can in two manners be regulated. By means of cocontraction of antagonistic muscle groups and by neural reflexive feedback of muscle length and muscle strength, measured both by means of sensors in the muscles. The impact of the reflexive regulation is...