My pilot project will focus on developing and validating the piece of equipment (an uneven surface treadmill) critical to my dissertation project. My dissertation project's research design and my chances to obtain external funding will be considerably improved if I can demonstrate that the uneven surface treadmill functions appropriately. Additionally, I will test my data collection methods' feasibility once the treadmill development is complete by examining the EE of 5 subjects. From this pilot data, I will establish my sample size and finalize my data collection protocol for my dissertation work.
The specific aims of my pilot project are 1) to build and test the efficacy of a treadmill that has a variable surface attachment and that functions in incline and decline modes. Following this, 2) I will develop a protocol for its safe utilization under various conditions such as level, sloped, and burden carrying. If successful, this treadmill, together with my protocol, will be used in my dissertation to analyze the effects of anthropometrics, gait perturbations, physiological factors, and other mechanical variables during uneven surface walking as proxies for real-world terrain variation. While not representative of all surfaces encountered by hominins, the validation of this uneven surface treadmill is a critical initiation point for understanding the impact of terrain variability.
This treadmill will join a suite of other tools already at my disposal as a member of the Primate Evolutionary Biomechanics Lab (PEBL), which I will use to assess differences in walking metrics and EE between uneven and control conditions. These include the portable breath-by-breath VO2 analysis system (Cosmed K4b2) to measure the rate of oxygen consumption and a 6-camera motion capture system which I will use to quantify step length, width, and pelvis stability.