Human postural dynamics in response to the horizontal vibration

The dynamic responses of human standing postural control were investigated when subjects were exposed to long-term horizontal vibration. It was hypothesized that the motion of standing posture complexity mainly occurs in the mid-sagittal plane. The motor-driven support platform was designed as a source of vibration. The AC Servo-controlled motors produced anterior/posterior (AP) motion. The platform acceleration and the trunk angular velocity were used as the input and the output of the system, respectively. A method was proposed to identify the complexity of the standing posture dynamics. That is, during AP platform motion, the subject's knee, hip and neck were tightly constrained by fixing assembly, so the lower extremity, trunk and head of the subject's body were individually immovable. Through this method, it was assumed that the ankle joint rotation mainly contributed to maintaining their body balance. Four subjects took part in this study. During the experiment, the random vibration was generated at a magnitude of 0.44m/s 2, and the duration of each trial was 40 seconds. Measured data were estimated by the coherence function and the frequency response function for analyzing the dynamic behavior of standing control over a frequency range from 0.2 to 3 Hz. Significant coherence values were found above 0.5 Hz. The estimation of frequency response function revealed the dominant resonance frequencies between 0.60 Hz and 0.68 Hz. On the basis of our results illustrated here, the linear model of standing postural control was further concluded.