The Nintendo Wii Balance Board (WBB) is increasingly used as an inexpensive force plate for assessment of postural control; however, no documentation of force and COP accuracy and reliability is publicly available. Therefore, we performed a standard measurement uncertainty analysis on 3 lightly and 6 heavily used WBBs to provide future users with information about the repeatability and accuracy of the WBB force and COP measurements. Across WBBs, we found the total uncertainty of force measurements to be within ±9.1 N, and of COP location within ±4.1 mm. However, repeatability of a single measurement within a board was better (4.5 N, 1.5 mm), suggesting that the WBB is best used for relative measures using the same device, rather than absolute measurement across devices. Internally stored calibration values were comparable to those determined experimentally. Further, heavy wear did not significantly degrade performance. In combination with prior evaluation of WBB performance and published standards for measuring human balance, our study provides necessary information to evaluate the use of the WBB for analysis of human balance control. We suggest the WBB may be useful for low-resolution measurements, but should not be considered as a replacement for laboratory-grade force plates.
This paper offers a new method of gait classification based on a phase variable description. The method is shown to provide improved classification accuracy relative to an LDA pattern recognition framework when trained with nonsubject-specific data.
Vehicle drivelines are lightly damped non-linear systems possessing many degrees of freedom with dynamic interactions between the various subsystems. There are many sources of excitation such as torsional impact caused by the take-up of backlash in the power train system. Such sources of excitation exist in transmission backlash, in driveline splines and in pinion to ring gear contact in the differential. Abrupt application or release of the throttle in slowly moving traffic or rapid engagement of the clutch can be followed by noise and vibration responses referred to in the industry as ‘clonk’. This paper presents a method of modelling a vehicle driveline which can identify the phenomena known as ‘clonk’ and ‘shuffle’. This model is based on the assumption that vehicle drivelines can be considered as partially lumped and partially distributed, which for systems of this type is wholly appropriate. In doing this it is possible to derive an analytical solution to the governing equations, which has not been considered previously. The results from this model are compared with a totally lumped model of the vehicle driveline for comparison.
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