| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 機械工程學系 === 99 === Many countries already confront the issue of aging society. The elderly needs enough mobility to raise the quality of their life. Because of age-related physiological declines, the mobility of segments is decreasing and it affects mobility about that the elderly can go everywhere by herself/himself. Therefore, driving would be one convenient option. However, with spatial constraints of the driver’s space of sedans, the ingress motion at the driver’s door is challenging, especially for the elderly who usually has limited range of motion.
The objective of this study is to establish a new vehicle design procedure taking into account the performance of the human musculoskeletal system. Following the design procedure can bring forward some suggestion of elder-friendly ingress space design.
In the demo case study, one healthy young male subject performed ingress motions with the lateral sliding strategy. Whole-body kinematics and surface electromyography (EMG) of bilateral four leg muscles (rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius lateralis) were recorded simultaneously during the ingress motions, and the used to established musculoskeletal model in Anybody Modeling System. By adding joint angle constraints (feasible range of motion) of the elderly, the model was then employed to simulate feasible movements for the elderly during ingress. Since during the simulated ingress motion, the elderly body (model) interfered with the driver’s space, new special design and ingress motion suggestions were provided: about 38%-leg length distance is needed between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat; a 70-mm lower chassis would be better (than a current 2000cc sedan) for the elderly, in terms of efforts in lower extremity muscles during ingress; a good lead-foot placement position is with 200-300mm distance between right heel and the driver’s seat.
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