Integration of experimental techniques and multibody modeling for the human motion analysis

The aim of the work is to asses a novel methodology for the 3D analysis of the human motion: data obtained by 3D motion capture experimental techniques and dynamometric measurements obtained by force platforms are integrated with numerical data extrapolated from multibody simulations. The multibody model is developed with OpenSim, an open-source software which provides models of the human body or of single limbs defined by bodies (bones), joints (articulations), points (markers) and actuators (muscles); giving in input the coordinates of the markers obtained by motion capture it is possible to simulate the action and to extract several kinematic variables, such as joint angles and trajectory, velocity and acceleration of the center of gravity. The experimental and numerical data are used for the study of two typical test cases used to evaluate the muscular activity of lower limbs, which are the squat jump and the standing long jump. The combination of kinematic and dynamic data allows also energetic evaluations, useful for the validation of several simplified analytical models available from literature.