Research opportunities supervised by Dr Shayne Gooch include:
Email supervisor: shayne.gooch@canterbury.ac.nz
Characterizing Human Strength for the Purpose of Supporting the Design of Assistive Device
Degree: PhD
Project Description: People with disabilities are often required to work at or near their physical limits in performing daily activities. Hence, subtle improvements to the design of assistive devices can have life changing consequences. The purpose of this research is to better characterise the strength of people with disabilities to enable improvements in the design of assistive devices.
In an earlier study at the University of Canterbury, the strength characteristics of people with normal motor and sensory control were characterised by mapping forward push strength in the sagittal plane. The data obtained indicates that particular strength maps will be obtained for particular groups of people e.g. people with normal strength characteristics will have one characteristic map and people with particular disabilities will have distinctively different maps.
The purpose of this project is to:
- establish a means for characterising, in a three dimensional space, the strength of a person in the seated position;
- determine whether or not there are distinct strength characteristics for people with disabilities.
Tasks are likely to include:
- The development of a procedures for measuring human strength while seated
- Design a test rig for measuring upper body strength
- Obtain ethics approval ·Measure human strength
- Establish a means for graphically representing human strength in a 3D space
- Evolve a methodology for predicting human strength characteristics for people with disabilities based on a limited number of measurements
Funding Arrangements: Funding is being pursued in collaboration with Industrial Research Limited. A scholarship will be available for a suitable student.