Date of Award
Fall 2021
Publication Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.H.K.
Department
Kinesiology
Keywords
Automotive ergonomics, Biomechanics, Coordinative structures, Movement optimization, Movement variability, Statistical parametric mapping
Supervisor
E. Kim
Supervisor
F. Biondi
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of anthropometric height on movement variability during seven simulated automotive assembly tasks. Twenty participants completed seven simulated automotive assembly tasks commonly found in industry. The 20 participants were evenly distributed into one of four groups based on their height. For each group, and during each task, the following seven time-series joint angle profiles were assessed: Elbow Flexion/Extension (Flex/Ext), Shoulder Abduction/Adduction (Abd/Add), Shoulder Forward/Backwards movement (For/Back), Trunk Flex/Ext, Trunk Lateral bending (Lat), Hip Flex/Ext and Knee Flex/Ext. To compare between groups, Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) was used to assess group differences between mean joint angles over the entire task duration. Specifically, a SPM one-way ANOVA (p<0.05) was used to evaluate between group differences and if necessary six pairwise post hoc SPM t-tests (p<0.05) were carried out subsequently. Analysis of the data indicated that during each task, all four height groups shared at least one statistically similar joint-angle trajectory. The results further indicated that all during each task, each height group performed with a unique set of joint-angle profiles which were statistically different from all other groups. Thus, this study has provided evidence that the amount of kinematic joint angle variability between individuals of different height groups is dependent on the joints evaluated and the task performed.
Recommended Citation
Kagumba, Joe, "Ergonomic Evaluation of Percentile Height Differences During Automorive Assembly Tasks – A Focus on Joint Angle Kinematics" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 8871.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/8871