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Musculoskeletal Simulation
 Musculoskeletal Simulation is a
multidisciplinary
field that spans
engineering, biology, anatomy, biomechanics, physical and occupational
therapy, and many other highly specialized fields. At its
core,
musculoskeletal simulation is a field that is bringing
computational
models of people (like you) into the computer aided engineering world
of the 21st century. Musculoskeletal models (like the one
picture to the right) can be
used to evaluate
and design products and processes like never before...all within a
simulation environment. Incorporating musculoskeletal simulation into
the engineering workflow can help reduce the number of physical
prototypes, speed up the design process, increase the number of
possible design iterations, evaluate potential accommodation issues
with different size musculoskeletal manikins, and help identify
hazardous or risk prone design features before negatively impacting
your target audience. For manufacturing faciliities, this can
mean a
reduction in worker injury and savings from less worker lost
time and
from lower medical costs.
A classic problem with whole-body musculoskeletal simulation
is that there are significantly more muscles in the human body than
there are degrees of freedom. What this means from an
engineering perspective is that the system (i.e. human body) has many
ways of coordinating the actuation of all those redundant muscles to
produce a desired exertion or motion. Or more simply, there
are many solutions to the same problem. For example, looking at the
picture below on the left, If the magnitude of an external
force is known along with, the length of the forearm and the
insertion point of the biceps muscle on the forearm (and we assume that
is the only force producing muscle in the arm), then it is not
difficult to compute the muscle force from a simple moment equilibrium
about the elbow. Further equilibrium equations can subsequently give us
the reaction forces in the elbow joint. However, a more
realistic 'body' model looks like the picture on the right, in which a
simple moment equilibrium is not sufficient to resolve the problem.
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| Muscle
force system that is statically determinate. |
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Physiologically
representative muscle system that is statically indeterminate. |
No matter what the underlying methodology (usually defined by
whether the musculoskeletal simulation utilizes inverse dynamics or
forward dynamics) that is used to solve for these unknowns, any
musculoskeletal simulation must resolve this complex engineering issue.
The mathematical formulation of such a solution is beyond the scope of
the description of musculoskeletal simulation presented here.
However understanding the complexity of the problem will help
you decide on what musculoskeletal simulation software is best suited
for your needs. Any musculoskeletal simulation software
solution should have the following components:
- Enable users to develop their own models
programmatically
- Avaliable predefined whole-body and body-part models
with anatomically representative muscle insertion/origin points
- Established and active user community that can help
(in addition to the software developers) resolving any modeling
questions
- Body-models and muscle recruitment algorithms that
have been validated for specific applications of interest (i.e. gait)
- On-going research program assoicated with continued
development for advancing musculoskeletal modeling and simulatiion
If you
would like to learn more about musculoskeletal simulation or how we can
help you in incorporating
the human body in your designs and processes, Please contact us at info@ozeninc.com |
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