Trunk Stiffness Bending Device

Trunk control and postural habits greatly influence muscle movement in the rest of the body. The purpose of this project is to design an addition to the Twister mechanism device that measures axial muscle tone in an upright test subject.

Development and Project Goals
The Department of Neurology at Oregon Health and Science University developed the Twister device to study the regulation of tonic muscle activity during active postural maintenance. Twister measures torsional resistance and muscular responses in standing subjects during the twisting of the body axis. the device can be flexibly configured to study various aspects of tonic control across the neck, trunk, and/or hips. []

Problem Definition
Our goal is to evaluate the Twister mechanical and electrical components and determine how to make the device functional in an Motion Capture Laboratory. A subsystem consisting of a mechanism to detect lateral responses caused by external forces will be added to the existing structure to allow for a more complex data analysis of human axial tone.