Mapping Center Of Pressure during Standing Reach Tasks

Abstract

Postural stability and balance during manual material handling and industrial tasks are fundamental to ergonomic assessment of workplace tasks. Previous research has determined that accurate prediction of a person’s balance maintenance strategy is one of the most important parameters affecting the accuracy of posture prediction algorithms. Digital human modeling has the potential to provide designers with accurate tools to represent human posture, but currently available software typically lacks empirically-derived models of center of pressure (CoP) excursion. This paper presents an overview of a study that systematically quantified CoP excursion behavior through a series of standing reach tasks for participants with a wide range of body size. CoP excursion was greatly affected by foot placement and target location. The overall goal of this research is to develop an empirical model of center of pressure (CoP) excursion that can be integrated into human figure modeling software to improve prediction of standing postures typically observed in industrial tasks.