Stanford Biomechanics Research Project

From March 2022 to August 2022, I worked as a graduate researcher in the Stanford Neuromuscular Biomechanics Lab and Human Performance Lab. My team’s research focused on creating a low-cost and reliable method to consistently measure the sit-to-stand biomechanics of patients. Sit-to-stand transitions have been linked to 41% of falls within nursing homes and have been marked as a lead identifier for diseases such as osteoarthritis. By tracking sit-to-stand transitions, we can monitor patient degradation or rehabilitation over time.

Our solution, as presented below, is a force sensor equipped toilet seat that can track force and center of pressure data with use. We combined this with motion capture data to create a processing pipeline and identify correlations between the force data and the kinematics of a patient using the seat. My lead responsibilities within this project were designing the physical seat with integrated hardware as well as creating the baseline processing pipeline to quickly analyze force data with motion capture data.