Effects of varying inertial load on human wrist movement
Name
62783534-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
2.58 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
5f9b60c428b56364f9902497b6150529
Author(s)
Kai, Lauren C. (Lauren Catherine)
Advisor(s)
Neville Hogan.
Date Issued
2005
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
To study natural wrist movements in human subjects, a magnetic motion sensing system was employed to document unimpeded motion. Three identical bottles of different weights were designed as handles to provide a wide range of inertial loads. Subjects executed a series of horizontal and vertical moves with each bottle at two different speeds. Hypotheses concerning the effects of increased load on target overshoot, maximum acceleration and speed, and hand tremors were tested. The frequency content seen in the natural speed trials was found to resemble a normal distribution. This higher area of frequency content could potentially correlate with the frequency of hand tremors. After analysis of overshoot, there was found to be no statistical difference in the percent overshoot of movements by varying the weight of the handles. The data showed that the highest accelerations and speeds of the empty bottle were faster than those of the medium weight or the heavy weight bottle. One possible interpretation of this is that human wrist movement is force limited and there is a maximum acceleration at which humans can move.
Description
Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 44).
Subjects
Mechanical Engineering.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
