MEASURING COHERENCY OF HUMAN-INDUCED RHYTHMIC LOADS USING FORCE PLATES

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on measuring and quantifying the coherency of crowd-rhythmic movements. Two instrum ented force plates were used to independently measure the load-time hi stories of sets of two volunteer subjects performing rhythmic movement s. Subjects were asked to synchronize their motion to audible signals played at various frequencies. We observed that the coherency of motio n varies as a function of the frequency of motion. In addition to audi tory effect, the coherency is controlled by a visual effect (i.e, subj ects synchronize their motion with respect to the musical beat and mov ements of one another). Statistics of the coherency of motion are pres ented for subjects standing in two different orientations, and a suita ble type of probability-distribution function is suggested.