Masters' skill explained by visualization of whole-body muscle activity

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the computation of human motion dynamics and its analysis of experts' motion skills. The computation framework of the wire-driven multi-body dynamics previously developed by the authors is applied to the whole body human musculoskeletal model. While capturing time-series of motion data, somatosensory information measured by force plate and EMG sensors simultaneously is used for the dynamics computation. For the dynamics computation, we reduced the computation cost drastically by resolving to the non-linear optimization problem using decomposed gradient computation developed recently. As examples of analysis, we measured and analyzed experts' motion patterns, such as Tai Chi motion, tap dance and drum playing. In particular, we analyzed the characteristic behavior by the motion of the center of gravity (COG), condition of the ground contact, and muscle activity of the whole body. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.