Spatial kinematics describes the motion of objects in 3D space, unlike basic kinematics which studies movement along straight lines. Scientists and engineers use multiple fixed points to measure an object’s full range of motion and decompose it into one-dimensional motion. Spatial kinematics is important in robotics and prosthetics. A study at Walter Reed Army Medical Center used light-emitting diodes to objectively measure a patient’s movement with a prosthetic leg.
Spatial kinematics is used to describe the motion of an object in three-dimensional space. A knee flexion at the joint or the movement of a robotic arm are examples of spatial kinematics.
Imagine an arm bending. How would you measure the distance of his movement? Would you measure from your fingertips or your elbow? When an arm bends, parts of it go down, parts of it go up. In which direction is it moving? Different parts of the arm move at different speeds. How can you measure how fast it moves?
Unlike basic kinematics, which studies the movement of objects along straight lines, spatial kinematics is more complex. In basic kinematics, only two fixed points, the start and the end, are needed to describe the movement. A car traveling a straight line between two cities, for example. With these two points you can measure its speed, speed, travel time and travel distance. In spatial kinematics, the motion of an object must be measured from a series of points along its full range of motion.
Using more than one fixed point, scientists and engineers can decompose three-dimensional motion into a matrix of one-dimensional motion. Those measurements are then fed into formulas that allow them to scientifically describe how an object moves.
Spatial kinematics is very important in the field of robotics. To program a robot to reach out and grab something, many complex formulas come into play. The movement of a robotic arm does not occur in a single straight line. A series of mechanisms must exert a certain amount of force in a certain direction to bring the arm a certain distance from the robot.
Doctors have also used spatial kinematics to study the movement of humans with prosthetic limbs. In one study, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a patient was covered in light-emitting diodes and filmed with a special camera as he walked with a prosthetic leg. The images were fed into a computer and diodes were used to form a model of the patient’s movement. Each diode could represent a fixed point and allowed doctors to objectively measure how a patient with a prosthesis moved.
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