Julie Daly

37 | Helps you get the most out of the treadmill of life.

It did a lot of surveys. It built prototypes. It put a lot of people on machines and asked, "OK, what do you think of this? Should we move this? Should we tweak this?" That gets you most of the information you need. But that means you have to build a prototype and get a bunch of people to test it.

What's changed?

We're still putting the people on machines and gathering comments, but we're collecting all this data by measuring motion with the cameras, measuring forces, measuring oxygen consumption.

What tools do you use?

We use several systems. We have some computer simulations, where we have human mannequins that we put onto machine simulations, and check them for ergonomics and motion biomechanics. Once we have machines built as prototypes or finished machines, we have tools to study human motion on machines. We place reflective markers on the hips, knees, feet, ankles, all the major joints. We point six cameras at the markers. The cameras capture the motion of the person on the machine. We pull that data into our system and digitize all those points. We try to monitor the motion of all the joints to make sure they are all natural, that they are all in the standard range of motion for all the people who would be using the equipment.

We have some sensors that we can put inside shoes to see what forces people are feeling in your feet.

Anything on the horizon with exercise gear?

That's another part of my job. We get a lot of people coming to us and say, they have a "swimming machine," or something like that. We look at it to determine if it's worthwhile or if it even makes sense. I get to analyze any new inventions that come to our door and anything we've developed in- house. The latest one that was developed in-house was the Summit Trainer, which was released last year. It's a hybrid between a cross trainer and a stair climber.

Can you develop equipment that will do the exercise for you?

I get that question a lot. I should make that one of my goals.

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Biomechanical engineer Julie Daly tests and designs treadmills, cross trainers and other exercise equipment for LifeFitness in Franklin Park.