Mechanical neck disorder (MND) is one of the most common health issues and is characterized by restricted cervical mobility. However, traditional kinematic information often focuses on primary movement in the cardinal plane, which seems insufficient to fully determine the kinematics of the cervical spine because of the complexity of the anatomical structures involved. Therefore, the current inv...

Human performance measures such as discomfort and joint displacement play an important role in product design. The virtual human Santos, a new generation of virtual humans developed at the University of Iowa, goes directly to the computer-aided design model to evaluate a design, saving time and money. This paper presents an optimization-based workspace zone differentiation and visualization. Ar...

Real-time educational groupware systems allow physically separated learners to work together in a shared virtual workspace at the same time. These systems do not yet approach the interaction richness of a face-to-face learning situation. In particular, one element poorly supported is workspace awareness: the up-to-the-minute knowledge a student requires about other students’ interactions with t...

Computer simulations aimed at assessing functional characteristics of the graphic workspace are presented. The simulations involve a 10-df kinematic model of the distal part of the writing arm, and yield the effective workspace of the pen tip under two types of kinematic constraints. The first constraint involves fixing the forearm under various pronation angles, the second governs the protrusi...

Workspace awareness has emerged as a new coordination paradigm in software configuration management systems, enabling the early detection of potential conflicts by providing developers with information of relevant, parallel activities. The focus of our particular research in workspace awareness has been on detecting and mitigating both direct and indirect conflicts by unobtrusively sharing info...

It has been hypothesised that a global neuronal workspace underlies the brain's capacity to process information consciously. This paper describes a significant variation on a previously reported computer simulation of such a global neuronal workspace, in which competition and broadcast were realised through reverberating populations of spiking neurons. In the present model, unlike the previous ...

Significant potential exists for robotic and mechatronic devices to deliver therapy to individuals with a movement disability following stroke, traumatic brain injury, or cerebral palsy. We performed a series of experiments in order to identify which motor impairments should be targeted by such devices, in the context of a common functional deficit – decreased active range of motion of reaching...

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the effect of small variations (uncertainties) and large variations in design parameters on the size and shape of the workspace of the wire-actuated parallel manipulators. The static force/moment balance equations, taking into account the null space of the Jacobian matrix, are used for the workspace analysis. The parameters examined include: the windin...

This paper proposes a method to calculate the largest Regular Dextrous Workspace (RDW) of some types of threerevolute orthogonal manipulators that have at least one of their DH parameters equal to zero. Then a new performance index based on the RDW is introduced, the isocontours of this index are plotted in the parameter space of the interesting types of manipulators and finally an inspection o...