Observations of human muscle response during daily life activities of biped kinematics using a musculoskeletal simulator

Abstract

Research in biomechanics has numerous applications including rehabilitation which helps in the fabrication of assistive devices. The Assistive devices or exoskeletons are used to serve the patients affected by stroke and spinal cord malfunctioning. These devices are programmed to follow a fixed redundant gait cycle and are lacking in producing natural movement of the gait. To overcome this limitation and make the device more user comfortable during usage of their daily life activities, a thorough study was done using an open source software that contributed to the design of exoskeleton device for the subject. In the current study, a simulation of various daily life activities are thoroughly studied using a musculoskeletal simulator package like OpenSim. The paper presents the observations of muscle responses from ground reaction forces with minimized metabolic cost function in various activities of daily living such as sitting to standing, standing to sitting, jumping, twisting suddenly while walking and turning suddenly. The study deliberates the inputs for developing more comfortable exoskeletons in performing tasks in a more sophisticated manner.