Human Movement Modeling
Mehdi Yousefi Azar Khanian; Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemi Golpayegani; Mostafa Rostami
Volume 13, Issue 1 , April 2019, , Pages 55-68
Abstract
Recently, analysis of the human postural stability has gained increasing interest. This is mainly due to the necessity of understanding the self-organization mechanisms in this system activated in response to any motion pattern. The extraction of effective indicators from this system could help ...
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Recently, analysis of the human postural stability has gained increasing interest. This is mainly due to the necessity of understanding the self-organization mechanisms in this system activated in response to any motion pattern. The extraction of effective indicators from this system could help clinicians to diagnose patients’ postural disorders and guide the rehabilitation processes. The center of pressure (CoP) signal, as a collective variable, contains information from the human equilibrium system. Through the CoP trajectory production, various control mechanisms are activated at different time intervals, which is equivalent with emerging different basin of attractors in the phase space. The dynamical coordination of this system patterns determines how system switches between these attractors. In this paper, first to quantify the local information of CoP, two indicators are defined; "local correlation dimension (LCD)" and "phase dynamic coordination (PDC)". Then, for a designed experiment, the local behavior pattern of CoP time series is calculated based on the suggested indicators. Next, by designing a model that can generate rich dynamics with multiple attractors, we attempt to follow data behavioral changes. The proposed model is map based. The model parameters are tuned by PCD to follow the pattern of sub-attractors changes with the system LCD. Tracking the behavioral patterns of the posture system is one of the prominent results of this research. The proposed model not only can follow the local behavior of system, but also follows the global dynamics. Accordingly, the similarity of the decreasing-increasing trend of the correlation dimension variations for the model output and data demonstrates the variations of system’s degrees of freedom in the test trials. The proposed model is the first behavioral model for the posture system, which can be used to quantify the variation of information in other biological systems based on the proposed methods.
Human Movement Modeling
Hossein Ehsani; Mostafa Rostami; Mohammad Parnianpour
Volume 9, Issue 2 , July 2015, , Pages 191-203
Abstract
In the current study, a novel method for deriving the governing equations of the skeletal system of the human body has been presented. In this method, a novel approach for incorporating the kinematic characteristics of biological joints and also the effects of complex kinematic chains of the skeletal ...
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In the current study, a novel method for deriving the governing equations of the skeletal system of the human body has been presented. In this method, a novel approach for incorporating the kinematic characteristics of biological joints and also the effects of complex kinematic chains of the skeletal system has been proposed. The suggested method while utilizing the calculus of matrix-valued functions, derives the governing equations of the skeletal system in the form of ordinary differential equations. Moreover, since the formulations were presented in a recursive fashion, this paper suggests a computationally efficient algorithm to derive the differential equations of motion for the skeletal system. In order to examine the validity of the proposed formulations, a benchmark mechanism with three closed-loop kinematic constraints were considered. We compared the results obtained from our formulations with the outcomes presented in other studies and validated the proposed formulations. Besides, in order to investigate the application of the suggested method in simulation of the skeletal system of the human body, dynamical modeling of the shoulder rhythm was taken into consideration. Two models were employed for describing the shoulder rhythm: Original model and simplified model. The discrepancies observed between the outcomes of these two models delineate the necessity of using the original data for the shoulder rhythm. While the limitations of the available formulations have compelled the researchers to employ the simplified model for the shoulder rhythm, with the method we propose in this study this problem is obviated.
Rehabilitation Engineering
Ziba Gandomkar; Fariba Bahrami
Volume 7, Issue 1 , June 2013, , Pages 21-37
Abstract
Changes in gait pattern are early symptoms in many disorders such as balance and control problems resulted in fall among elderlies. This paper aims at proposing a new set of features extracted from Gait Frieze Pattern (GFP) in order to classify seniors to fallers and non-fallers. For indicating the effectiveness ...
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Changes in gait pattern are early symptoms in many disorders such as balance and control problems resulted in fall among elderlies. This paper aims at proposing a new set of features extracted from Gait Frieze Pattern (GFP) in order to classify seniors to fallers and non-fallers. For indicating the effectiveness of the presented method, the algorithm is used for recognition of different type of abnormal gaits. The introduced method consists of three main steps: extracting the subject from background, generating GFP and aligning them, and building the proposed image from GFP by thresholding followed by morphological operations. For evaluation of the proposed features, video sequences are collected from 8 elderly fallers, 8 non-fallers, and 8 youth while performing standard Timed Up and Go (TUG) test. In addition to TUG test youths are asked to walk fast and pretend to walk with 6 different types of abnormalities (limping, waddling, anterior- posterior sway, lateral sway, dragging, steppage gait). For finding correct classification rate, each time one data is considered as test and others as train and label of train data with the most similarity with test one on the score of normalized cross correlation is assigned to test data. Comparing to conventional TUG test, correct classification data is improved around 20% for faller detection. In addition, correct classification rate for detecting of different abnormalities in gait is approximately 90%.
Rehabilitation Engineering
Mohammad Salehi Amini; Siavash Kazemirad; Saman Mohammadi; Roya Narimani; Farzam Farahmand
Volume 7, Issue 2 , June 2013, , Pages 121-132
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to design, analyze and evaluate an effective low-cost driving mechanism for gait trainer. The crank-rocker mechanism was favored for reproducing the path of foot during gait cycle, considering the type of motion and design parameters such as adjustability for different anthropometries, ...
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The purpose of this study was to design, analyze and evaluate an effective low-cost driving mechanism for gait trainer. The crank-rocker mechanism was favored for reproducing the path of foot during gait cycle, considering the type of motion and design parameters such as adjustability for different anthropometries, providing sufficient space for interactions with physical therapist, and simplicity of execution. The dimensions of the mechanism were determined using optimization method while applying appropriate constraints so that the normal gait pattern, particularly of stance phase, was obtained. A 2-D model of the lower limb was developed to simulate the gait of a patient when using the mechanism. Results indicated that with appropriate positioning of the patient, the kinematic and kinetic patterns of the normal gait are reconstructed with no risk of injury. However, there is a high risk of injury of the knee articular surfaces and ligaments, if the patient is positioned only 3 cm higher than designed height.
Rehabilitation Engineering
Rahele Mohammadi; Ali Mahloojifar
Volume 7, Issue 1 , June 2013, , Pages 39-55
Abstract
A critical issue in designing a self-paced brain computer interface (BCI) system is onset detection of the mental task from the continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) signal to produce a brain switch. This work shows significant improvement in a movement based self-paced BCI by applying a new sparse learning ...
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A critical issue in designing a self-paced brain computer interface (BCI) system is onset detection of the mental task from the continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) signal to produce a brain switch. This work shows significant improvement in a movement based self-paced BCI by applying a new sparse learning classification algorithm, probabilistic classification vector machines (PCVMs) to classify EEG signal. Constant-Q filters instead of constant bandwidth filters for frequency decomposition are also shown to enhance the discrimination of movement related patterns from EEG patterns associated with idle state. Analysis of the data recorded from seven subjects executing foot movement using the constant-Q filters and PCVMs shows a statistically significant 16% (p<0.03) average improvement in true positive rate (TPR) and a 2% (p<0.03) reduction in false positive rate (FPR) compared with applying constant bandwidth filters and SVM classifier.
Gait Analysis
Afsaneh Yavari; Mostafa Rostami; Ali Esteki; Ali Tanbakoosaz; Mehdi Yousefi Azar Khanian
Volume 7, Issue 1 , June 2013, , Pages 75-84
Abstract
Most of the recent biomechanical researches have been focused on the stability of people with disabilities and a few researches have been done on the athletes with high balance skill.The methods of elite athletes in keeping the balance can state valuable information about balance strategies and effective ...
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Most of the recent biomechanical researches have been focused on the stability of people with disabilities and a few researches have been done on the athletes with high balance skill.The methods of elite athletes in keeping the balance can state valuable information about balance strategies and effective parameters on balance. In this study we calculate local dynamical stability of musculoskeletal systems during a hard balance motion. Eight non elite athletes and six elite athletes in Wushu participatedin this study. Kinematic parameters for quantitative assessment of postural fluctuations were recorded by VICON ® Motion Analysis System. Using Lyapunov stability theory, stability and preparation of athletes were evaluated and the best model in performing the balance motion was shown to the coaches. Results from this study showed that motion pattern and preparation of athletes are effective in the displacements of center of mass and center of pressure and finally the stability of athletes.
Neuro-Muscular Engineering
Mehdi Borjkhani; Farzad Towhidkhah
Volume 4, Issue 2 , June 2010, , Pages 109-122
Abstract
Writing is one of the high practiced and complex movement skills of human. Most of the proposed models for writing are bottom-up models, and therefore they could not reflect the biological aspects of movements in this process. Also there is not any model for illustrating the role of different parts of ...
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Writing is one of the high practiced and complex movement skills of human. Most of the proposed models for writing are bottom-up models, and therefore they could not reflect the biological aspects of movements in this process. Also there is not any model for illustrating the role of different parts of the brain in this task. In this paper we are going to describe some neurological and physiological aspects of the brain operation in the writing task. Then some evidence of prediction in writing and existence of internal models for limbs such as hand are presented. According to these, modeling of writing using model predictive control (MPC) is possible. Based on the presented simulations and experimental results it seems that the modeling of writing by MPC is very similar to the real skill, The proposed model has some advantages such as being consistent with the biological evidence, modeling prediction in writing and high correlation of the statical and dynamical features of the generated letters with those written by human.
Biomimetics
Saeed Rashidi; Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemi Golpayegani; Ali Fallah; Farzad Towhidkhah
Volume 4, Issue 1 , June 2010, , Pages 33-44
Abstract
In drawing movements, the constraints imposed on the trajectory geometry properties and kinematics are known with two laws: 2/3 power law and isochrony phenomenon. In this paper experiments have been designed to study the relation between two empirical laws in straight and curved patterns of drawing ...
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In drawing movements, the constraints imposed on the trajectory geometry properties and kinematics are known with two laws: 2/3 power law and isochrony phenomenon. In this paper experiments have been designed to study the relation between two empirical laws in straight and curved patterns of drawing movements in 16-18 years old subjects. Providing two models of power is indicated that in drawing movements, invariant features can be defining. These features are independent of subject, direction and size of trajectory and together they can simplify the role of the upper motor control system and decrease the degrees of freedom and the computational complexity.
Rehabilitation Engineering
Robabe Vatanparast; Hossein Karimi; Fariba Bahrami; Roya Narimani
Volume 3, Issue 3 , June 2009, , Pages 171-178
Abstract
CNS applies Anticipatory Postural Adjustments (APA) strategy to reject or minimize perturbation during different voluntary movements. The postural control mechanisms associated with voluntary arm movement (rapid arm rising) in below knee amputees (BKA) was investigated and the results were compared with ...
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CNS applies Anticipatory Postural Adjustments (APA) strategy to reject or minimize perturbation during different voluntary movements. The postural control mechanisms associated with voluntary arm movement (rapid arm rising) in below knee amputees (BKA) was investigated and the results were compared with the normal subjects. Biomechanical variables including ground reaction forces and displacements of the center of pressure were used to investigate the APA in BKA. Six below knee amputees and six control subjects stood on a force plate under three conditions: 1. with both feet on the platform, 2. with right foot (prosthetic foot) and 3. with left foot on the plate. For each condition, the task was repeated 10 times. At the same time, a camera recorded the task performance. The recorded data were used to determine the start moment of the movement. The instant at which, for the first time before starting the movement, any one of the recorded biomechanical variables deviated from its initial value was considered as the beginning of the APA. To increase the validity of the test, efforts were made to match the subjects with regards to their age, gender, cause of amputation and prosthesis types. Our results indicated that the center of pressure in the BKA participants showed greater displacements in medial-lateral and anterior-posterior directions. It was also observed that the vertical components of the ground reaction forces, when the right foot was on the plate, were increased. There were no significant differences in other biomechanical variables between the two groups. We may conclude that the voluntary arm movement perturbs the posture in the BKA participants more than in the control group. The BKA participants shifted their weight to the intact limb by the anticipation of the disturbance to avoid balance loosing. Therefore, in our study the intact limb in below knee amputee subjects played an important role in the balance control. Based on our results, we suggest considering the role of the intact limb in the rehabilitation programs and strengthening the muscles of both limbs as a major part of theses programs.
Gait Analysis
Mohsen Sadeghi Mehr; Davoud Naderi; Nader Farahpour; Saeed Davoud Abadi Farahani
Volume 3, Issue 3 , June 2009, , Pages 179-187
Abstract
The present study was devoted to determine the standing human body reactions to perturbation of a base plate in the frontal plane, in order to preserve its stability. A base plate with sinusoidal fluctuation was designed and built and then markers were mounted on the specified locations on it and the ...
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The present study was devoted to determine the standing human body reactions to perturbation of a base plate in the frontal plane, in order to preserve its stability. A base plate with sinusoidal fluctuation was designed and built and then markers were mounted on the specified locations on it and the skin of subjects before testing. During testing the subjects (N=10) tried to preserve their stability against perturbations. By using Motion Analysis System, the body responses of subjects were analyzed. Using inverse dynamic methods and experimental kinematic results, forces and moments applied to the joints and between feet soles and the base plate were determined. In theoretical study, the kinematic and dynamic equations of motion of a robotic model of human body in frontal plane by using repetitive Newton-Euler method were obtained. Based on the stability of the model and supporting vertical forces criterion an object function was defined, in order to assure the stability of the model. By optimization of the object function, angle of the model joints under perturbation and its first and second derivatives were determined. The good agreement of the theoretical and experimental results states that in similar conditions a robotic model can be used instead of expensive and time-consuming experiments.
Neuro-Muscular Engineering
Davoud Naderi; Mohsen Sadeghi Mehr; Nader Farahpour; Behnam Miripour-Fard
Volume 2, Issue 2 , June 2008, , Pages 85-93
Abstract
Cognition of human postural responses can provide valuable insight on the control of stability. Researchers can use this finding to design rehabilitation exercises to improve the patients, balance. This study was done with the aim of conducting theoretical and experimental investigations on human response ...
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Cognition of human postural responses can provide valuable insight on the control of stability. Researchers can use this finding to design rehabilitation exercises to improve the patients, balance. This study was done with the aim of conducting theoretical and experimental investigations on human response to tilting base plate in the sagittal plane. A four-segment model with three degrees of freedom was used as a biomechanical model of human body and its motion was studied in the sagittal plane. The postures of model were found by optimization technique such that the stability of model to be optimum. Zero moment point stability criterion was applied to find the optimum posture against the tilting base plate. To verify the theoretical results experimentally, the stability measure device was designed and manufactured. In several trials, the responses of ten male healthy persons standing on a tilting platform under perturbations were recorded by using the motion analysis system. Through data analysis, the response of each subject was surveyed and the experimental and theoretical results were compared. Both the experimental and theoretical results showed that the human central nervous system evokes the ankle strategy to keep its balance under tilting base plate conditions. A good coincident between the experimental results and theoretical predictions was observed, indicating that the model basis optimization method can be well relied upon to predict the human joints angle trajectories in response to base plate tilting.
Rehabilitation Engineering
Nima Jamshidi; Mostafa Rostami; Siamak Najarian; Mohammad Bagher Menhaj; Mohammad Saadatnia; Firouz Salami
Volume 2, Issue 1 , June 2008, , Pages 57-64
Abstract
In this research the kinematics parameters derived from ground reaction forces were evaluated to limit the differential diagnoses and measure the degree of disabilities during the walking among neuropathic subjects. 25 neuropathic subjects affected by drop foot and 20 normal subjects were enrolled in ...
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In this research the kinematics parameters derived from ground reaction forces were evaluated to limit the differential diagnoses and measure the degree of disabilities during the walking among neuropathic subjects. 25 neuropathic subjects affected by drop foot and 20 normal subjects were enrolled in the study. There were no differences in the age, weight and height between the patients and normal subjects (p > 0.05). Each subject was tested in average 10±2 times for calculating the kinetic parameters derived from ground reaction forces. Then time parameters and vertical components of force including three extremums of vertical forces, which state various phases in gait, anterior-posterior component of ground reaction force, maximum propulsion force, maximum breaking force during loading stage, maximum propulsion force in the end phase of terminal stance, impact derived from the contact of the patient' foot with floor, loading rate and unloading of vertical forces during the contact' phase of the patient's foot with floor and center of pressure displacement in sole of foot and friction' coefficient between foot and floor were calculated. The results revealed that correlation between the first and second peaks of the anterior-posterior component of ground reaction forces, center of pressure displacement pattern in the sole of foot and time parameters of the vertical forces can be good indexes for differential diagnoses and measuring the degree of disabilities. This research can extend the clinical applications of ground reaction force plate, introduce suitable criteria to limit differential diagnoses and measure the degree of disabilities among the neuropathies. There is a need to replicate this research with more patients and normal subjects to confirm our findings.
Neuro-Muscular Engineering
Abbas Erfanian Omidvar
Volume -2, Issue 1 , July 2005, , Pages 81-92
Abstract
This paper is concerned with developing a force-generating model of electrically stimulated muscle under non-isometric condition. Hill-based muscle models have been the most popular structure. This type of muscle model was constructed as a combination of different independent blocks (i.e., activation ...
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This paper is concerned with developing a force-generating model of electrically stimulated muscle under non-isometric condition. Hill-based muscle models have been the most popular structure. This type of muscle model was constructed as a combination of different independent blocks (i.e., activation dynamics, force-length and force-velocity relations, and series elastic element). The model assumes that the force-length and the force-velocity relations are uncoupled from the activation dynamics. However, some studies suggest that the shapes of the active force-length and the active force-velocity curves change with the level of the activation. Moreover, the "active state" block of the Hill-type model has no physical interpretation. To overcome the limitation of the Hill-type model, we used the multilayer perceptron (MLP) with back-propagation learning algorithm and Radial Basis Function (RBF) network with stochastic gradient learning rule for muscle modeling, where the stimulation signal, muscle length, velocity of length perturbation, and past measured or predicted force constitute the input of the neural model, and the predicted force is the output. Two modes of network operation are of interest: a time-varying network which allows updating the parameters of network to continue after convergence, and a time-invariant neural network with parameters fixed after convergence. The results show that time-varying and time-invariant neural networks would be able to track the muscle force with accuracy up to 99.5% and 95%, respectively. In addition, the results show that the accuracy of muscle force prediction depends on the structure of neural network. The prediction accuracy of RBF network after 1000 training epochs is higher than that of MLP network after 5000 training epochs.
