Human posture control on a dynamic platform

Dear EPSRC staff: I appreciate you may have some difficulty fitting this project into a particular research area, because it is interdisciplinary. It is at the interface of structural engineering and movement science with implications for medical rehabilitation and healthy ageing.

The research questions the project is trying to address/the objectives of the project:

What are the balance and control methods used by humans standing or walking on moving surfaces.
This topic is particularly important because balance control can be compromised in people who have suffered strokes, have diseases such as Parkinsons, are recovering from knee/hip replacement or are simply aging. Such people are already less stable while standing and are more likely to experience problems where the floor is moving, which can occur not just in air, rail, road of water transport but on structures such as vertically lively floors, footbridges or grandstands and swaying footbridges or even tall buildings. Tolerance to such motion is poorly understand even for
the young and able-bodied, and there is no information on the factors that reduce such tolerance.

The approach that will be taken to answer these questions (what the student will actually be doing):
The research will explore the mechanisms of balance and stability for different types of floor motion (roll, pitch, heave and sway) at different levels and frequencies representing
real situations in transport and on structures. It will also explore other factors such as haptic (touch), auditory and visual cues that improve or reduce tolerance. In turn this will allow better design of environments suitable for people with compromised balance.
The research will be supported by a state-of-the-art infrastructure (the EPSRC VSimulators virtual reality and motion simulation facility) at
Exeter. Human and structure movement and force data will be collected using a range of technology such as optical motion capture, force plates, inertial measurement units, automated motion capture systems (CODA) and wireless technologies (IMUs). Linear and non-linear relations of human body and (structure) floor movement will be modelled mathematically.

The novel engineering and/or physical sciences content of the research (the science that places it within EPSRC's remit):
The project will use the VSimulators facility (EP/P020690/1). The novelty is that this will be the first time to combine motion capture, virtual reality and ground reaction force measurement on an a simulated moving structure (building, bridge) or transport (bus, tram, train, plane). This will provide unparalleled opportunities to study all the factors at play, with a very large parameter space.