Date of Award

Summer 1988

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Biomedical Engineering

First Advisor

Myklebust, Joel

Second Advisor

Sances, Anthony

Third Advisor

Myklebust, Barbara

Abstract

This thesis is presented to fully describe the motor control data collection system that was constructed by the author. This description is given in Chapter 3 and the appendices. Three types of experiments were performed to determine the characteristics of the system and the feasibility of experiments on human subjects as compared to the results of previous authors. The results of the experiments performed show that: 1.) The output of the system with no human subjects present may be modelled as the typical second order mechanical equation using sinusoidal analysis techniques. 2.) The electronics providing angular displacement and angular velocity feedback signals may be related to spring and damping measurements of the system. It must be stated here that this feedback does not alter the mechanical characteristics of the motor, but only changes the input command signal to the motor. 3.) The normal subject tests show only that the output of the system is reasonable when compared to the results of previous authors. There was no attempt to analyze the specific biomechanical and physiological effects that are responsible for the normal subject's ankle compliance results.

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