BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Poor sitting posture has been implicated in the development and perpetuation of neck pain symptoms. This study had 2 purposes: (1) to compare change in cervical and thoracic posture during a distracting task between subjects with chronic neck pain and control subjects and (2) to compare the effects of 2 different neck exercise regimens on the ability of people with neck p...

We describe a new method for data glove calibration that uses computer vision techniques to create a filter for individual customization of input obtained from the glove. Our major observation is that it is possible to create a linear correlation between the hand posture reported by the data glove and the observed posture of the hand itself. We use a feature-based computer vision system indepen...

Robot’s posture control ability in the air is required when designing advanced robots that can run, jump and land, which can perform tasks in workplaces where ordinary robots cannot go. Using such a robot could afford human safety as well as cost reduction. In this paper, we describe the control method of robot’s posture in its falling for the safe landing using reinforcement learning (RL). The...

Previous studies have shown that human subjects can adapt to a new visuomotor relationship that depends on the trajectory of the arm. However, these studies have not distinguished between hand- and joint-based learning models. We have examined whether different endpoint kinematics are necessary to obtain a differential visuomotor shift. The joint trajectory was varied by changing the initial po...

Nine-month-old infants were tested at the precipice of safe and risky gaps in the surface of support. Their reaching and avoidance responses were compared in two postures, an experienced sitting posture and a less familiar crawling posture. The babies avoided reaching over risky gaps in the sitting posture but fell into risky gaps while attempting to reach in the crawling posture. This dissocia...

Neuroimaging is ubiquitous; however, neuroimagers seldom investigate the putative impact of posture on brain activity. Whereas participants in most psychological experiments sit upright, many prominent neuroimaging techniques (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)) require participants to lie supine. Such postural discrepancies may hold important implications for brain function in ...

A regular office chair was equipped with force transducers, which allow to monitor and to guide the sitting behavior of a person during an office working day. Only four force transducers are required to estimate characteristic parameters for quantifying the biomechanical effect of a certain sitting posture. Based on these parameters, which rely on a simple biomechnical model, a posture cost fun...

Aim. The aim of this review is to determine the relationship between sleeping body posture and severity of obstructive sleep apnea. This relationship has been investigated in the past. However, the conclusions derived from some of these studies are conflicting with each other. This paper intends to summarize the reported relationships between sleep posture and various sleep indices in patients ...

Legs of sprawled-posture, quadrupedal trotting geckos (Hemidactylus garnotii) each functioned differently during constant average-speed locomotion. The center of mass decelerated in the first half of a step and accelerated in the second half, as if geckos were bouncing in fore-aft and side-to-side directions. Forelegs decelerated the center of mass only in the fore-aft direction. Hindlegs provi...

Posture is a nonverbal behavior and a universal means of animal and human communication. It is observed not only in interpersonal communication but in clinical situation. Our recent research shows that posture affects the mood and emotional awareness of the subjects. This study compared the subjects' awareness between two groups, the operational group (actual posture) and the image group, which...