Range of rest posture of human lower limbs

Abstract

The most advocated schemes of comfort perception have proposed an objective method to evaluate “effects in the internal body” and “perceived effects”—the state of the art for comfort/discomfort evaluation. Postural comfort is one aspect of comfort/discomfort perception, and this current work adds to existing knowledge toward a more objectified posture evaluation for comfort. The authors have used the concept of Range of Rest Posture (RRP), as proposed by Apostolico et al. [1], useful for comfort evaluation. The study focused on the identification of RRP within the Comfort Range of Motion (CROM) for these human joints in the lower limbs: hip, knee, and ankle. The proposed method is based on extensive experimental work involving 114 healthy individuals (59 males and 55 females) ranging from 20 to 40 years old. The age range was narrowed to avoid an age-clustering of results due to inhomogeneity of the statistical sample. The experimental data were processed using statistical methods for identifying the RRP in the experimental CROM. Several Maximum Level of Comfort (MLC) positions were found within the RRP. These positions were among the most important information in the comfort evaluation analyses.