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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Predictive Simulation Of Human Movement And Applications To Assistive Device Design And Control, Vinh Nguyen Nov 2019

Predictive Simulation Of Human Movement And Applications To Assistive Device Design And Control, Vinh Nguyen

Doctoral Dissertations

Predictive simulation based on dynamic optimization using musculoskeletal models is a powerful approach for studying biomechanics of human gait. Predictive simulation can be used for a variety of applications from designing assistive devices to testing theories of motor controls. However, one of the challenges in formulating the predictive dynamic optimization problem is that the cost function, which represents the underlying goal of the walking task (e.g., minimal energy consumption) is generally unknown and is assumed a priori. While different studies used different cost functions, the qualities of the gaits with those cost functions were often not provided. Therefore, this dissertation …


Walking For Object Transport: An Examination Of The Coordinative Adaptations To Locomotor, Perceptual, And Manual Task Constraints, Avelino Amado Jul 2019

Walking For Object Transport: An Examination Of The Coordinative Adaptations To Locomotor, Perceptual, And Manual Task Constraints, Avelino Amado

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation was to understand how the intrinsic dynamics of gait adapt to support the performance of an ecologically relevant object transport task. A common object transport task is walking with a cup of water. Because the water can move relatively independent of the cup, the cup and water system is classified as a complex object. To model this task participants carried a cup with a wooden lid placed on top. On the lid there was a circular region with the same circumference as the cup and a ball. The object of the task was to keep …