Sharif Digital Repository

Human posture control is a complex issue in biomechanics. Human body is unstable without any controller. The stabilization of the body is achieved by the activation of the muscles and creating the joint torques. In this paper, human body in upright standing position has been modeled using an inverted double pendulum. Since the body parameters are different among the individuals, it is assumed that these parameters are not known exactly and are uncertain. An adaptive controller based on the inverse dynamics in addition to parameter adaptation law has been designed. The simulation of the system using this controller shows the effectiveness of the proposed method in controlling the human... 

People use trust to cope with uncertainty which is a result of the free will of others. Previous approaches for inferring trust have focused on homogeneous relationships and attempted to infer missing information based on existing information in a single relationship. In this paper we propose using methods of social network analysis to infer trust in a heterogeneous social network. We have extended the problem of relation extraction and allowed using any type of binary operator on matrixes, whereas previous work have focused on linear combination of base matrixes (the only allowed operator was summation of two matrixes). We present two genetic algorithms which use ordinary numerical and... 

The central pattern generators (CPG) in the spinal cord are thought to be responsible for producing the rhythmic motor patterns during rhythmic activities. For locomotor tasks, this involves much complexity, due to a redundant system of muscle actuators with a large number of highly nonlinear muscles. This study proposes a reduced neural control strategy for the CPG, based on modular organization of the co-active muscles, i.e., muscle synergies. Four synergies were extracted from the EMG data of the major leg muscles of two subjects, during two gait trials each, using non-negative matrix factorization algorithm. A Matsuoka׳s four-neuron CPG model with mutual inhibition, was utilized to... 

Background: Chronic low back pain (CLBP) disability has been particularly frustrating because its treatment has been a great therapeutic challenge. Disability has been suggested to depend on different factors that should be found and considered in the medical management. The inter-segmental coordination is often impaired in CLBP subjects; however, to the best of our knowledge, there is no evidence about the relationship between the existence of coordination problems and disability in CLBP patients. Objective: To evaluate the correlation between sagittal plane trunk-pelvis intersegmental coordination parameters during walking and disability level in CLBP patients. Methods: Kinematic data were... 

Cooperation among nodes is vital in Mobil Ac Hoc Networks (MANETs) since in such networks nodes depend on each other for forwarding and routing packets. However, cooperation in such operations consumes nodes' recourses such as battery and bandwidth. Therefore it is necessary to design incentive mechanisms to enforce nodes to forward packets when the source and destination of the packet are other nodes. In this paper, we present a distributed fair solution to judge, punish and re-admit a selfish node, forcing nodes to cooperate with each other. Our scheme is different from previous ones in that it combines two characteristics that have been separately handled in previous works. The first... 

The central pattern generators have been considered as a method to simplify the control of the complex rhythmic motions, e.g., walking, by the central nervous system. In this study, a control structure was designed to control the soleus and tibialis anterior muscles in a complete gait cycle. The activation patterns of the muscles were measured experimentally and used as the reference signals of a tracking problem. The hip angle and ground reaction force were also used as a feedforward. The feedback from the Golgi tendon acted as a regulator of muscle activity. The controller was applied to two gait trials. The results indicated that the designed controller was capable of tracking the... 

Inter-segmental coordination can be influenced by chronic low back pain (CLBP). The sagittal plane lower extremities inter-segmental coordination pattern and variability, in conjunction with the pelvis and trunk, were assessed in subjects with and without non-specific CLBP during free-speed walking. Kinematic data were collected from 10 non-specific CLBP and 10 non-CLBP control volunteers while the subjects were walking at their preferred speed. Sagittal plane time-normalized segmental angles and velocities were used to calculate continuous relative phase for each data point. Mean absolute relative phase (MARP) and deviation phase (DP) were derived to quantify the trunk-pelvis and bilateral...