Forward dynamics simulation of human body under tilting perturbations

Human body uses different strategies to maintain its stability and these strategies vary from fixed-foot strategies to strategies which foot is moved in order to increase the support base. Tilting movement of foot is one type of the perturbations usually is exposed to human body. In the presence of such perturbations human body must employ appropriate reactions to prevent threats like falling. But it is not clear that how human body maintains its stability by central nervous system (CNS). At present study it is tried that by presenting a musculoskeletal model of human lower extremity with four links, three degrees of freedom (DOF) and eight skeletal muscles, the level of muscle activations causes the maintenance of stability, be investigated. Using forward dynamics solution, leads to a more general problem, rather than inverse dynamics. Hence, forward dynamics solution by forward optimization has been used for solving this highly nonlinear problem. To this end, first the system’s equations of motion has been derived using lagrangian dynamics. Eight Hill-type muscles as actuators of the system were modeled. Because determination of muscle forces considering their number is an undetermined problem, optimization of an appropriate goal function should be practiced. For optimization problem, the characteristics of genetic algorithms as a method based on direct search, and the direct collocation method, has been profited. Also by considering requirements of problem, some constraints such as conservation of model stability are entered into optimization procedure. Finally to investigate validation of model, the results from optimization and experimental data are compared and good agreements are obtained.