Power Driven Articulated Dummy Final Report

Scope and Contents

This collection contains the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI) final report for Project No. K6051, Power Driven Articulated Dummy. This project was under Contract No. NAS 9-1370 and ran from May 22, 1963 through July 31, 1965. The report was prepared by J. Slowik for the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas and is dated December 14, 1965. The report is 8.5 by 11 inches, plastic spiral bound, and is 70 pages long plus three appendices, and includes images as well as several schematic drawings that fold out to full size.

Arrangement

Collection is in original order.

Biographical / Historical

An articulated dummy was built in the early 1960s for NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center by the Illinois Institute of Technology to support the development of space suits. It used hydraulic and electrical actuators to replicate many of the joint motions of the human body, with realistic forces. Sensors placed throughout the dummy measured forces that a prototype suit might exert on a human being when wearing the suit in a space environment. That enabled suit designers to measure how much force a human would need to move an arm or leg, or turn his or her head, when wearing a suit in space. By using this dummy instead of a human being during the design and testing of a space suit, tests could proceed that might otherwise be painful, tedious, or dangerous for a human being.