Model predictive control for modeling human gait motions assisted by Vicon technology

Abstract

Human muscles and the central nervous system (CNS) play the key role to control the human movements and activities. The human CNS determines each human motion following three steps: estimation of the movement trajectory; calculation of required energy for muscles; then perform the motion. In these three step tasks, the human CNS determines the first two steps and the human muscles conduct the third one. This paper efforts the use of model predictive control (MPC) algorithm to simulate the human CNS calculation in the case of gait motion. We first build up the human gait motion mathematical model with 5-link mechanism. This allows us to apply MPC to calculate the optimal torques at each joint and optimal trajectory for muscles. Outcomes of simulations simultaneously are compared with the real human movements captured by the Vicon motion capture technology which is the novelty of this study. Results show that tracking errors are not excessed 7%.